Gas prices pissing you off???

Mike682

I can't control gas prices, but I can control how much of it I use; That's why our next car is going to be a hybrid. I'm keeping the Durango because it does have/serve a purpose, however, for the majority of our driving, the hybrid will be used.


To create a hypothetical, it would be interesting to see the results of a week long driving boycott....obviously I would be interested in the effect on gas prices, if any..

Polk65

Frank Z wrote:

We should have been drilling in Alaska 20-30 years ago. :mad:

Did ya notice that the artic permafrost is melting?
MESSAGE.

I know some of us here live on the coasts. It's time to sell and move inland before propery values are under water.

Finally, I think oil futures should be traded at a one-year future. This way we won't be boinked as bad.

Good thing today is humpday...

edit:
today's lesson has two new words and they are no stinkin' purple color!

artic is spelled arctic
propery is spelled property

gmorris

Very well put Polk65. Simple supply & demand economics. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

avelanchefan

George Grand wrote:

And I thought it an appropriate time to reveal to you that I am really a woman.


George Grand (of the Jersey Grands)

Well I guess I will respond.....


WTF???

ND13

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere, recently, that the major oil companies have been setting record profits almost every quarter since 9/11. IMO, that's price gouging. Seeing that most of the major oil companies are now foreign owned, it starts to make sense, eh? They've never liked that we have been paying less than half of what they have had to pay, but that's one of the benefits of us buying over half of the worlds oil supply and being the protectors of the free world.

I'm of the opinion that while we are in Iraq, we should start getting repaid for our expenses for rebuilding the infrastructure of that Godforesaken desert, with oil. I'm not saying to just take it, but to pay them like $25 a barrel for it. The majority of the rest of the world hates us anyway, so eff them for whatever they think of us if we were to do just that.

OPEC is retaliating against us for our involvement and military presence in the Middle East and especially Israel, with their oil. Didn't we show them how to get the **** out of the ground in the first place??? Seems that I also remember reading somewhere that it only cost them about $2 per barrel to get it out of the ground. So let's add another $10 per barrel for transportation and other expenses, so that would be approximately $12 per barrel or so. We are where, now,...like $59 per barrel. That's ridiculous and uncalled for, period.

madmax

Gas is pretty much under priced given the cost of everything else.
madmax

landry_p2000

$2.49 a gallon in Memphis.

ND13

$2.53 down from $2.69 for 87, in Indy. But I have to run 93 in my old Chevy, so it's $2.73 for me. It cost me $59 to fill up Monday night.

Mike682

$2.79 for 87
$2.98 for 93

Have seen full serve stations selling 93 octane for over $3.00/gal.

If we keep buying, they will keep selling.....

RuSsMaN

Great thread. Losers.

Polk65

What ever happened to methanol? I got great mileage from that stuff.

Then my birthplace great-grape-state of Cali-for-ni-a adopted a cure-all additive called MTBE that farked up the ground water. Congrass voted for a big phatt clean up, charging 80% of the cost to tax payers for the cleanup cost. Oil companies are p/o'd at the thought of paying 20% and are appealing.

Is there no r/d these days? geez...

pmlewis

F1nut, a Highlander Hybrid and a small trailer may workout for you. Not as convenient as a van, but it might work.

The problem I have with the Hybrids is that the cost premuim still isn't justified (for me). My 4 cylinder highlander gets 22.5 mpg. The hybrid should get about 30 combined. At 20,000 miles per year I would save 222 gallons of gas, or about $630 per year. There is currently a $10,000 price difference between the 4 cylinder 2wd and the Hybrid 2wd. At that savings it would take almost 16 years to pay back the investment. Even if you keep the hybrid 16 years, you will have to replace the batteries at least once. Of course if you were moving down from a Hummer or something, the numbers are not so bad, but you loose your off road capability.

Polk65

....

mhardy6647

As someone who lived through the "Energy Crisis" of 1974 and who was driving (and waiting in line for gas) by the time of the second one in 1978, I was astonished and amused as cars (and trucks) in recent years got bigger and thirstier again. I thought that would never happen, but it did.

I have a long commute, by choice, and there is no viable public or mass transportation option (by Massachusetts' choice, I guess). We have generally bought small and/or fuel-efficient vehicles because they: are (generally) cheaper, use less gas and pollute less. All upside, as far as I am concerned.

We got rid of our sub-20 mpg 1993 Explorer this year, leaving us with a 23-ish MPG Ford Windstar van (good for transporting the college student(s) back and forth every year with their stuff), my 33-ish MPG Ford Focus ZX-3 5-speed (heck, you can buy THREE of these for what a decent BMW costs), and my wife's hybrid 4WD Ford Escape (running 30.9 MPG long-term average as I type this).

The only thing that bugs me about the little Focus (which is cute, comfortable, and fun to drive) is that its mileage is considerably worse than our 1988 Chevy Corsica's (a bigger, heavier, but less-powerful car) was. Heck, we put 188k miles on the Corsica in 13 years without major repairs AND with 35-ish MPG average mileage (5-sp. with 4 cyl.) and a reproducible 40 MPG on long highway trips. I am not sure how the zippier but thirstier 2000 ZX-3 really represents progress!

The hybrid Escape wasn't much more expensive than the gas version and, even if the mileage isn't spectacular, it's decent, and the vehicle HAS to pollute less (which counts for something too) even if we don't save the cost of a set of batteries in gas purchases in the vehicles lifetime. We just put about 2k miles on it for a vacation to North Carolina, and it worked just fine, thank you.

Hybrids seem like an attractive stopgap to me.

I really doubt that hydrogen power will ever be a cost-effective reality for a private vehicle. I've seen much more in the news on liquid/high-pressure hydrogen-fueled than water/electrolysis fueled hydrogen-burning vehicles... the thought of 'hydrogen fueling stations' makes me nervous as heck. Talk about terrorist targets!

As long as the oil business is profitable (and it is, hugely), there's not likely to be any sea change in the supply of high-energy fuels. Sooner or later, that will have to change, but Exxon-Mobil ain't gonna be leading the charge.

Plus... the fact is that China and India, and not the US or Europe, are going to dictate the future of the energy-supply business... note that the big oil companies are all multinational, and owe allegiance to no country or government :-(

*End of rant*

Sami

Public transportation is your friend.

Too bad the people here are too stupid and too lazy for it to ever take off.

Mjr7531

nadams wrote:

Rising prices on farm-produced products are very real. The price of hay for our horses just went up because it costs so much more to bale the hay. The farmer that we buy from recently switched from regular diesel to "offroad" (high sulphur content) diesel, in an attempt to keep prices down...

I thought that farmers got diesel from the gov't? (Not for free of course, but at a better deal...)

Skynut

There are a lot of places to point our fingers.
Opec is definitely big on blame as is our own oil companies but our government is also playing a huge roll. They protect their intrests and will not even try to buck the trend of sucking up to the big oil companies. To piss off the oil companies means no re-election or chance of election.
I believe we could grow enough corn in our country to really put a dent in our oil consumption. The problem with that is the farmers will profit and not the politions or the oil company.
Crude is a finite comodity. We will run out eventually. maybe not in our lifetimes but someday they will give up and stop even looking as the cost will exceed the value.
I for one adjust my driving habits, I drive my little Grand-am most of the time and my truck only when I need it or sometimes just to keep the bugs out.
My wife and I are shopping for a new truck, we are discussing the alternate feul option and we are still buying a large American truck but it should get better mileage than my Dakota 4wd.
I do not have a solution for the problem at hand but it does piss me off to no end.
When people spend this much on gas they do not spend on other things so the economy begins to lag, prices for our goods go up and the purchase of non-essentials go down.
Greenspan thinks we are in an inflation so he jacks up the interest rate and the banks profit and the economy lags.
We all pay our little portion of the bill to keep the rich people rich.
It sucks to be on the bottom of the wealth chain.

aaharvel

HTrookie wrote:

No need to go that far....I am blaming myself for picking a V6 for my Accord....

a v6 accord doesn't get 12 to 13 mpg gallon either.

and if you look carefully at the numbers for both a 2.4 ltr i4 and a 3.0 v6 from Honda, the gas mileage doesn't vary that much. Credit that to Honda and it's technological know-how in building a good, powerful, yet efficient aluminum V6.

Skynut

Mjr7531 wrote:

I thought that farmers got diesel from the gov't? (Not for free of course, but at a better deal...)

Farmers get their feul without paying the road taxes. Feul has bunches of taxes assigned to it and some of them are related to road use: farmers do not pay for the road use portion of the taxes but are not allowed to use that fuel in their personal vehicles.

Spawndn72

The reason nothing is being done about alternate fuels is that more people are interested in Terrel Owens and the Eagles than they are in the price of fuel.

Early B.

Gas prices are simply another indication that America has lost control of its economy. Foreigners dictate prices for our two most precious commodities -- oil and audio gear.

Damn.

thehaens@cox.net

I feel all of your pain, prem petro out here is sitting right at 2.95, and this old benz runs like crap on reg. so I just grin and bear it, ugh. I was contemplating getting a used VW diesel, but the diesels at least in my area are carrying a high premium over their gas counterpart in upfront cost, and as such, diesel is over 3.00 a gallon anyway. So what is a person to do? F it, keep on fillin er' up..

Ricardo

aaharvel wrote:

a v6 accord doesn't get 12 to 13 mpg gallon either.

and if you look carefully at the numbers for both a 2.4 ltr i4 and a 3.0 v6 from Honda, the gas mileage doesn't vary that much. Credit that to Honda and it's technological know-how in building a good, powerful, yet efficient aluminum V6.

You are right on this; a V6 could easily get over 22 MPG...or more...but not under my foot...this thing has 240 horses and I just love feeling that power, so I hardly get to 17-18 MPG. I just guess if I did not have that power I would be easier on the foot....

hellohello

i like the idea of growing our own fuel, but then where will they build all the new houses for the people? It seems in my area even the tiniest patches of undeveloped land are getting a house put on it... maybe they can have rooftop gardens or something... lol oh, and a question, the fuel they make from crops is ethanol right? I read that u can run a car on pure alcohol and that they did it during ww2, but that stuff is expensive considering u need 80% Imagine taking ur car out for a drink lol

Spawndn72

BTW just paid $2.599 for regular here in Bradenton, FL

gmorris

Sami wrote:

Public transportation is your friend.

Too bad the people here are too stupid and too lazy for it to ever take off.

That's a stupid thing to say. I live in Akron, Ohio and work in Cleveland, Ohio. Since you're not stupid or lazy, look that up on a map. Tell me, how am I suppose to use public transportation that doesn't exist? There is no train or bus service from Akron to Cleveland for a commuter.

I also can't carpool, because no one I work with lives near me.

mhardy6647

grain alcohol (ethanol) is relatively cheap, as such. Alcohol destined for human (beverage) consumption is highly taxed.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has studied thermodynamics knows, there's no free lunch, and one has to put a lot of energy (heat, for distillation) into some fermented mash or what-have-you to get (95%, 190-proof) ethanol out.

Ethanol is also a lower-energy fuel than long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons AND it unfortunately produces the same combustion products (CO2 as well as H2O) as do the purer hydrocarbon fuels. Thus the theoretical attractiveness of hydrogen, which burns to H2O, producing no greenhouse gas(es).

hellohello

oh, ok so alcohol works kinda like petroleum... I guess im back to my water engine , anyone have an old engine theyd like to contribute.. for science!?!

mhardy6647

well... water has the rather unique property of being non-compressible. If you try to compress water, it fights back! This is how those water-powered soda-bottle rockets work. Problem is, you've gotta put energy into the water to pressurize it. Back to square one.

Now, as you said before, the other way to go is to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn the hydrogen. This is easily accomplished by electrolysis against platinum or other nonreactive electrodes, but, again, you've got to put in energy (DC electricity) to electrolyse water.

The ol' external combustion (steam) engine is another nice approach, but of course you've still gotta put energy IN to convert the water to steam (i.e., boil it). A steam-powered Stanley 'race car' was the first wheeled vehicle to pass 100 mph, ca. 1903, although the test ended in tragedy (all "facts" are actually IIRC's).

Jstas

In order to support the raw fuel demands in the U.S. alone, we would have to convert ALL current farm land to fuel crop production and find a way that gets more fuel per pound out of the crop than the 35% rate that they can currently do that. Even then, the fuel demand rate would still out pace the rate at which the crop based fuel could be grown and refined by about 40-45%. On top of that, take that 55-60% of the fuel and allocate about 25% of that percentage to actually making the fuel. Oh but, forget about saving any cash on the deal in your pocket 'cause all your food crops and anything made from such crops including feed crop for livestock, crops for clothing like cotton and hemp and even things like nusery grown trees and sod farms would most likely triple in cost because EVERYTHING would have to be imported. So while you may pay what you might think is reasonable at the pump, you will all still **** about how much your lettuce, tomatoes, steaks and KFC will cost you and how it is "insane", "price gouging", "criminal", "highway robbery" and so on and so forth.

What a vicious little cycle.