As the price of gas at the pump skyrockets

I couldn't tell you how much I spent in gas last month, but I can definitely tell you how much my healthcare premium was :eek:
 
orca64 said:
The electricity to recharge that tes la is produced by burning gas, oil and coal. And the fission of atoms. And only about 2% comes from “green” energy.
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Solar and wind energy last year grew at the fastest rate in U.S. history and now account for a record 13% of the nation's power generation.

Texas is the largest producer of renewable energy followed by Iowa and Oklahoma.
 
orca64 said:
The electricity to recharge that tes la is produced by burning gas, oil and coal. And the fission of atoms. And only about 2% comes from “green” energy.
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Yeah, I never said they were solar powered. We’re talking about the high price of gas and it’s affect on our wallets. Costs me just over $11 to fully charge my Model S. That gets me around 250 miles. No ICE car is getting that type of mpg (roughly 90) with current average gas prices.
 
I really enjoy people who use the term pain at the pump. Go to work, go to the grocery and then park the car in the damn driveway. If everyone cut there gas consumption 15% worldwide the prices would come down.

and before you say what about the people who have to commute a long way to work - move. You shouldn’t have located your home that far from your employment and bought that damn big truck.
 
Clip4 said:
I really enjoy people who use the term pain at the pump. Go to work, go to the grocery and then park the car in the damn driveway. If everyone cut there gas consumption 15% worldwide the prices would come down.

and before you say what about the people who have to commute a long way to work - move. You shouldn’t have located your home that far from your employment and bought that damn big truck.
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If only life worked as simple as your imagination claims it should. That thought process might’ve worked in the early 19th century, but today it’s just not practical for the average person. People travel and have places to go on a daily basis, life is busy for many of us.
 
Mikey B said:
If you're thinking "the government," I think you're dreaming. They only wish they had some semblance of control over these soaring gasoline prices; if they did, they'd be trying to restrain them. Nobody wants to be blamed for this, especially in an election year.

The truth, however boring, is it's supply and demand. Removing (or even threatening to) a sizable chunk of the world's oil supply, without a simultaneous drop in demand, inevitably drives up prices across the board. OPEC has proven this time after time.
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Don't kid yourself on this. My cousin is an oil exploration exec and the government's capricious actions are directly responsible for the lack of supply. I also may or may not have an angle on energy related stuff due to my job, and I'm convinced he's telling the truth.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah, I never said they were solar powered. We’re talking about the high price of gas and it’s affect on our wallets. Costs me just over $11 to fully charge my Model S. That gets me around 250 miles. No ICE car is getting that type of mpg (roughly 90) with current average gas prices.
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not 90, but my wife’s new hybrid is clocking 60-65 mpg on a regular basis. Like an electric car, it depends on the driving you’re doing as well as the conditions. In terms of miles per dollar, you’re around 22 mpd, hers is only about 15 now, but was in the high 20s a year or two ago before the bad decisions made prices skyrocket.

charging at home, my Leaf (40 kW battery) costs under $5 to “fill up” and that gets me between 130 and 160 miles depending on temperature. My mpd range is 26 to 30.
 
bflynn said:
not 90, but my wife’s new hybrid is clocking 60-65 mpg on a regular basis. Like an electric car, it depends on the driving you’re doing as well as the conditions. In terms of miles per dollar, you’re around 22 mpd, hers is only about 15 now, but was in the high 20s a year or two ago before the bad decisions made prices skyrocket.

charging at home, my Leaf (40 kW battery) costs under $5 to “fill up” and that gets me between 130 and 160 miles depending on temperature. My mpd range is 26 to 30.
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My daily driver is a Mazda three with a six speed manual. Doing your math I’m at 10 miles to dollar. About 39 mpg. I only paid $16,000 for it new. So if it weren’t for the 32 mile commute I have to make I’d be in good shape. I noticed people in times like now focus on miles per gallon. But how much did it cost to purchase that high mpg car. A Tesla looks like a good deal right now but how much does it cost to get into that vehicle. Does the return justify the entry fee.?
 
Morgan3820 said:
I remember. You are correct. But it also helped trigger a pretty deep recession. Unfortunately, I think we are in for it again. I think our systemic issues are worse this time.
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I’m no expert but I think it was more of a symptom then a cause….

but I agree we have massive systemic issues. What those issues are, I’d hazard a guess we’d disagree but I’ll leave it at that.
 
I have my motorcycle battery charge topped off. It’s still cold here but a few spikes into the mid-upper 50’s next week. My cutoff is normally in the mid 50’s to ride, factors are length of ride then how much I feel like bundling up.

I’ll put my battery in this weekend, then be ready. In the meantime, I’ll make some headway with energy prices with my woodstove, split & pile more firewood.
 
These gas prices are beyond stupid. I really feel for any chronically ill people living in rural areas having to commute for care, and disabled people with big heavy mobility equipment that won't fit in vehicles that get decent gas mileage at a reasonable price.


A good friend of mine, chronically ill has been just broken the last few years with COVID isolation, deteriorating health, and 50/50 good/crappy healthcare. All she really want to do is hold her grandkids (14 of them) and no one can really afford to travel anywhere.
 
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hindsight2020 said:
Car dependency is baked into our craptastic transit infrastructure and suburban sprawl legislated-as-a-preference mode of (self)sorting. We're a suburban nation with poor transit options.

As such, gasoline demand for job commuting is inelastic, and substitutions are a rare choice. Most Americans will just cut expenditures somewhere else and live with that concession.

Which is why complaining about gas prices is another form of impotent rage. Like voting in the present system. All hat no cattle.

I do hope it breaks the asset inflation going on in the flying toy market, but that's not germane to the question at large. I'd also like for the Fed to sack up, aggressively tighten the cost of borrowing and thus return the labor value they stole from me and mine, but that too is a "wish in one hand and crap on the other see which one fills first" type of thing.

Oh well, back to spectating the collapse in slow motion.
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If you can figure out a way I can live in town so I can walk to everything, but not have to listen to constant noise, have peace and quiet, not have to look at a house/car/person when I open up my front (or back door) I am all ears.
 
RyanB said:
If only life worked as simple as your imagination claims it should. That thought process might’ve worked in the early 19th century, but today it’s just not practical for the average person. People travel and have places to go on a daily basis, life is busy for many of us.
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I would argue the opposite. In the days of Amazon, Walmart, etc. most of us truly have a need to leave the house other than work. Even a lot of groceries can show up on subscribe-and-save and you rarely need to go to more than one store to get everything you actually need.

People mostly run their errands very inefficiently and burn a lot more fuel than they need to. If I run my errands inefficiently, it's on purpose, usually because I want to take a longer ride/drive in a fun motorcycle or car.
 
Morgan3820 said:
As the price of gas at the pump skyrockets will we see more motorcycles on the road as an economy measure as seen in Europe?
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Not appreciably. It did happen back in 2008 a little, but went right back to being the pleasure activity soon after. MCs will always be mostly toys in USA. Primarily because you still have to have a car in most of USA. Savings are pretty minimal then.

In practical terms you do not save anything if you have to buy a motorcycle. If you already have one, sure, riding it vs car saves some gas, but adds a lot of headache for most. And you quickly realize that the savings are very, very small for most people. The reasons MCs are popular in other places around the world as commuting options have little to do with gas prices and a lot more to do with car prices(including buying, insuring, mx, etc), space/cost to park it, traffic, and even cost and difficulty of getting auto license. Most of these issues do not exist for vast majority of US commuters.
 
I recall vividly the great Northeast blackout of 2003, since I was on a train from Boston when the power went out, and it took me 3 days to get home (I was about 120 miles short of destination), much of the time spent sleeping in a hotel lobby with other stranded travelers.

A cascading failure took 256 power plants offline in a matter of hours, putting much of 8 states and a good chunk of Canada in the dark for several days. 55 million people lost power. My understanding is that only modest progress towards preventing a future cascading failure has been made since--though I'm happy to be proven wrong on that point!

I wonder how much worse it would have been had a big fraction of the auto and local delivery truck fleet had been electric? Granted, most gas stations in the effected area couldn't pump, but some had backup generators, and the ICE vehicles generally had longer range to begin with.

Not trashing EVs, I can see becoming a one-ICE, one-EV family at some point, but I think the fuel distribution grid is more robust than the power distribution grid, at least for handling short-term disruptions
 
RyanShort1 said:
Don't kid yourself on this. My cousin is an oil exploration exec and the government's capricious actions are directly responsible for the lack of supply. I also may or may not have an angle on energy related stuff due to my job, and I'm convinced he's telling the truth.
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Including the lack of supply in China and the UK? Our government is more powerful than I thought!
 
RyanB said:
If only life worked as simple as your imagination claims it should. That thought process might’ve worked in the early 19th century, but today it’s just not practical for the average person. People travel and have places to go on a daily basis, life is busy for many of us.
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People make choices. If you chose to live 10 miles from the nearest grocery, 40 miles or more from where you work, and a full size pick up, those were your choices. Oil has had boom and bust prices for for the last 45 years. Prices today are nothing new.
 
If only people would drive and use cars like I think they should!!!

(green font should be obvious)
 
Laughing, not really.... Well I retired 1-17-22.... A lot has happened in that time...:lol::lol: Still planning and trying to figure what is going on with the market, my investments, looking for good health care insurance, moving dollars in my budget (hope to fly more now, 100LL will be a factor).

On the bright side the airport is only 7 miles from home and I can take the Subaru instead of the pick up to save a few bucks. Hangar rental is $350/mo but the fuel for the heater is going up....:(:(

I don't think many folks here in Juneau will be going to a motorcycle as primary transportation any time soon. If the weather was +80* a good part of the year maybe..
 
I'm kicking myself for not having put a pile of cash aside to snap up good deals on fuel inefficient toys.

Gas is such a small part of my budget compared to everything else it's not really going to change anything. I expect it to be under $4 again by the end of the year anyway, although that's pure speculation just like everyone else.
 
Morgan3820 said:
but how much does it cost to get into that vehicle. Does the return justify the entry fee.?
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I don’t remember the exact price, but it was well under 30k, maybe as low as 25 and that was because we didn’t want the bare bones model.

The Leaf is tricked out with everything. Price and efficient was not the main thing, it’s just a side effect.
 
So, doing some quick numbers: 40MPG, $5 gas. Free electricity(because I'm too lazy to factor it in) and a $10,000 price premium for the electric.

You'd need to cover 80,000 miles to break even.
 
GaryM said:
My understanding is that only modest progress towards preventing a future cascading failure has been made since--though I'm happy to be proven wrong on that point!
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I don't think you can be proven wrong... You can only be proven right when it happens again! :eek: But I suspect you're likely right. It's not profitable to put in safeguards.

I wonder how much worse it would have been had a big fraction of the auto and local delivery truck fleet had been electric? Granted, most gas stations in the effected area couldn't pump, but some had backup generators, and the ICE vehicles generally had longer range to begin with.
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Hmmm... I've heard this talked about before but never really thought through it all the way.

Let's say the average ICE vehicle has a range of 400 miles with a full tank of gas. Those tanks will be filled to a bunch of varying levels, so it's probably safe to say that on any given day at any given time, the average ICE vehicle has 200 miles of range available when the power goes out.

Now, the average BEV (battery EV, fully electric, not hybrid) probably only has a range of 250 miles. However, it spends a lot more of its life at full than an ICEV does. Supposedly 90% of Americans drive less than 35 miles per day, but let's call it 50 to make the math easier. Starting in the morning at 250 miles, spending maybe 9-11 hours commuting and at work or running errands at 225 miles, about 1.5 hours charging back up to 250 means the average BEV is going to have a range of 235-240 miles at any given time.

Now, given the fact that you could theoretically run a generator or a siphon pump to get some more dinosaurs into the tank of an ICEV gives it a slight advantage when it comes to refueling, but the average person is still going to have trouble... It's probably a wash. This isn't really a reason to go one way or the other except in special circumstances.
 
chartbundle said:
So, doing some quick numbers: 40MPG, $5 gas. Free electricity(because I'm too lazy to factor it in) and a $10,000 price premium for the electric.

You'd need to cover 80,000 miles to break even.
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How about some better numbers - Average US MPG is at 24.9 as of 2019, so let's call it 25. That means that with $5 gas, it costs 20 cents to go a mile in an ICEV.

EVs get around 4 miles per kWh, and the average electricity price in the US is $0.12/kWh, so it costs 3 cents to go a mile in an EV.

So, to make up a $10K price difference would take 58,823 miles.
 
The cure for high prices is high prices.*


*until politicians get involved, then law of unintended consequences prevails.
 
chartbundle said:
So, doing some quick numbers: 40MPG, $5 gas. Free electricity(because I'm too lazy to factor it in) and a $10,000 price premium for the electric.

You'd need to cover 80,000 miles to break even.
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where do you get 40 mpg and a 10k premium? You think you can still buy a new car (that you you want to drive) for 15k?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
How about some better numbers - Average US MPG is at 24.9 as of 2019, so let's call it 25. That means that with $5 gas, it costs 20 cents to go a mile in an ICEV.

EVs get around 4 miles per kWh, and the average electricity price in the US is $0.12/kWh, so it costs 3 cents to go a mile in an EV.

So, to make up a $10K price difference would take 58,823 miles.
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Your number aren't exactly that much "better". If you're going to be using averages, Tesla is not average. Average EV -- depending what you mean by average -- is around 3mi/kwh. Average cost of electricity now is over .15(and is going up) so that's about 5c/mile

Not sure what average difference in price is between ICE and EV, but let's continue with $5 gas, 25mpg(20c/mile), and $10K

66,666 miles to make up 10K
 
Really depends on your use case. Our '17 Outback has 18,000mi on it, our '19 Civic Si has 14,000mi on it. We put 3000-3500mi on each car per year, so the payback for the 66,666 miles is 22 years lol.
 
EdFred said:
If you can figure out a way I can live in town so I can walk to everything, but not have to listen to constant noise, have peace and quiet, not have to look at a house/car/person when I open up my front (or back door) I am all ears.
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We had it with Covid and blew it by vaccinating everyone.
Just kidding.
I hate city living as well. Been there, never again.
 
genna said:
Your number aren't exactly that much "better". If you're going to be using averages, Tesla is not average. Average EV -- depending what you mean by average -- is around 3mi/kwh. Average cost of electricity now is over .15(and is going up) so that's about 5c/mile

Not sure what average difference in price is between ICE and EV, but let's continue with $5 gas, 25mpg(20c/mile), and $10K

66,666 miles to make up 10K
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That's a beastly number!
 
Another thing about EVs that’s over looked in these calculations is that most of us charge at work for free. I’m at work for 12 hrs. That’s roughly 40 miles of range for a 32 mile drive home. 7 day work week, 280 miles of free range. That’s around $90 of savings a month in gas over an average ICE vehicle right now. I’ve read some Tesla owners saying they save about $500 a month in gas. I don’t drive that much but I’m probably close to $200 savings a month in gas.
 
Velocity173 said:
Another thing about EVs that’s over looked in these calculations is that most of us charge at work for free.
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Really? If we asked work to install free electric car chargers we'd be laughed at. Seriously.

So, let's look at work, we employ ~125 people. So far, I've not seen one electric car in the parking lot. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
 
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