Gas prices jump $1.50 before second hurricane THIS MONTH!!!

I'm just gonna go ahead and say, good. Good good good good. You skittery shifty cock-eyed consumerists can pay all the money in the world for your go-juice, and I'm loving it because it will get me that much closer to electric cars. I'm not loving it for the prices, but I'll sacrifice to reach my ideals, the American people don't seem to be much into that these days.

Every few minutes my wife comes in and tells me the latest news about runs on the gas station, prices up to $5. The gas stations are raping you in the back seat of your own car and you're lining up waiting for your turn.

Let me explain is this way. If your car gets 40 miles per gallon (I'm being real generous here because likely 3% of you reading this have a car that can do that,) you are spending about 35 cents to travel four miles at yesterday's gas prices. An average electric car gets somewhere around 4 miles per kWh, which means for that same 4 miles, they're not paying 35 cents, but more like 9-11 cents in this area. That means if you travel 400 miles, you're paying $35 in a gas car, while you're only paying $10 in an electric car. It adds up perty quick. Just think, if your car gets 20 mpg, you're paying $70 for 400 miles, and you're paying 18 cents per mile.

Electricity prices aren't going to rocket up like gas prices every time someone gets scared of a storm or terrorism or whatever. I can't make gasoline in my backyard, but I can make electricity, in fact, there's a little solar panel charging a battery in the shop as we speak on this bright sunny day before the hurricane ever even hits. I'd also like to mention that we just had a hurricane LAST WEEK and nobody panicked then. Electricity prices are very stable compared to oil because there are many diverse sources of electricity. In fact, when all else fails, we have backup generators. If one plant goes down, you can divert power from another one, and you may only just barely have a blink in your power, or you may not notice at all. There are 66 nuclear power plants many with more than one reactor, nearly 500 coal plants, 2000 hydroelectric plants and tons of natural gas plants. Oil pretty much only comes from one place, and once it's gone, it's gone. And let me be the one to tell you, it's almost gone. Prices will go up. Prices WILL go up.

One good note on the hurricane, Texas is going to reap a boatload of wind energy from this storm.
WiredForStereo

Hooray for Gas Mileage!

After I posted the last gas mileage post, I got ahold of today's New York Times. Front page story says how the car companies are backing down from complaining about gas mileage regulations.

It turns out they don't have as many friends as they used to.

They are now focusing on "volunteering" to raise gas mileage because they've come to realize that it's either offering a reasonable concession, or they may be subject to far stiffer restrictions than they want to comply with.

Finally, something Congress has done right. My personal congressional approval rating has just risen to 11%!!!

WiredForStereo

Emails to Phil Valentine

I was listening to the Phil Valentine show recently because he had an American car company representative on talking about gas mileage. As you might expect, this guy was giving all the normal nonsense about the car companies not being able to do what the government wants and only selling what the people want.

So I wrote Phil a letter. Here is the whole back and forth in it's entirety:

That guy you had on talking about gas mileage was lying through his
teeth, wow, what a load of crap.

Car makers can make what ever they want, or are told to. They just
don't want to make efficient cars. You think they can't make a pickup
that will get 35 mpg? Daimler Chrysler was advertising that they could
before the sale of the company went through. Why was there such a boom
in light trucks and SUV's? The car companies decided that's what
people SHOULD want, not what they did want. Advertising did that.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh both are now advertising Cadillacs while I
now have to listen to whiney commercials about gas mileage that the car
companies have made.

Why did Honda drop the Accord Hybrid? Because the Accord Hybrid SUCKS.
It gets 27 mpg while my non-hybrid Toyota Corolla gets 35. You don't
see Toyota complaining about the Prius, they are making money hand over
fist off that car, and as gas prices rise, they'll be making even more.
Toyota plans to offer the Hybrid Synergy Drive in all it's cars, and
people will buy them, because they work, and they work well. American
hybrids barely get 2-3 mpg better than their non hybrid brothers.

You think car manufacturers can't make a car that gets 52 mpg? The
Prius already does if you take it easy on the gas, and the third
generation Prius, out next year or the year after, is said to be able
to get 30% better than that.

Technology travels faster than B.S.

Bottom line, that guy was so full of crap his eyes were brown. And you
bought every minute of it.


Phil replied:

Bottom line: Auto makers make what they think people want.
If their research showed people wanted cars that get 52
miles to the gallon you don't think they'd make them?
What would be their motivation NOT to make them?

Phil


To which I replied:

Thanks for responding,

It's monetary motivation. It costs hefty amounts of money to retool to
make new cars. In fact, it costs more to create a new line of cars
than it does to launch an ad campaign to make people like the cars that
already exist. There was a significant amount of time, money, and
effort that went into making the Prius, as well as the EV1, and will
also into the Chevy Volt.

True, car companies make the cars people want. But if a car company
wants the people to want a car, it's a simple task of telling them what
car to want. Appeal to machismo, add some sex appeal, and slap the
word "new" on it. Not hard. It's been done for millenia, and it costs
less than actually making something new.

American car companies will continue to slide into the back seat in
sales and popularity as long as they continue to push the status quo.
I personally am an American, and proud of it, and I'd absolutely love
to buy and American car. But every American car I've owned has been a
piece of crap, and every Toyota I've owned, I still have. Right now,
there are no American cars beside the Chevy Volt that I would consider
buying, and the Volt is still years off.

American cars will also not win the car wars when they advertise "high"
mileage as 30 mpg while there are a great many Asian cars that get
above 40, and most European cars (not sold in America) get above 40.

If Toyota meets it's goal of producing the third generation Prius drive
train at 50% of current costs, there will be no way American cars will
ever catch up. And when gas gets to $7 a gallon, suddenly that ugly
little aerodynamic pod car starts to look mighty enticing.

Thanks


Unfortunately with his show hosting duties to fulfill, Phil was not able to reply. I can only expect that he remains unconvinced and continues to tow the party line.

I shall try again another day,
WiredForStereo

Dr. Gasoline, or: How Learned How to Stop Worrying and Love the Go-Juice.

Once again, necessity has me opening my fat yap to complain about something.

Actually, I am not complaining, I welcome higher gas prices, they prove I am right. Go ahead, look at some of my older posts, you'll find a number of references to higher gas prices, and the reason therefore.

Higher gas prices necessitate action, hopefully, it will get people to stop buying Escalades and Tahoes, and Sequoias. Get ahold of a Corolla, and Echo, maybe a Prius. I ride a motorcycle that currently gets around 47 mpg. My wife drives a Corolla that gets around 34. We've decided that with the children situation, our next car will be a Toyota Sienna Hybrid (or whatever they'll call it by then.)

As you may be able to tell, I like Toyotas. They are the kings in the hybrid biz, and they have been building very reliable cars for a long time. In fact, the most populous car in history is a Toyota, the Corolla. Toyota has most of the factory produced electric vehicles on the road, the RAV4 EV, though there are very few of them. Plus, they have some great plans for hybrids in the future. They plan to offer every one of their vehicles in hybrid form, and there are several much higher mileage machines in the works. The 3rd generation Prii are supposed to make 30% better mileage than the current ones, and there is some talk of nearing the 100 miles per gallon mark.

Anyway, the sustainable option would of course be a flex fuel type hybrid, or better, a biodiesel model, and best, an all electric car. Hopefully with the current state of things, those options will be nearer on the horizon.

Mark my words, gas will go up even more.
WiredForStereo

WORLD series: Gas Mileage

A huge problem in this country (even the prez thinks so) is our reliance on foreign oil. You see, whilst people argue about the existence of peak oil in this day and time, the fact remains that peak oil already happened in the US in 1972. That's right, THIRTY FIVE FREAKING YEARS AGO!!!!! Thus, since then, we have been buying ever increasing amounts of oil from foriegn countries whilst our own supply continues to decline.

What's wrong with this picture?

You see, back in the 60's (and a number of other years also) there was this guy named Hubbert. Hubbert made this nifty (prophetic) prediction that US oil would peak around 1970. He also predicted that world oil would peak around 2000. Can the man tell 'em or what?

As you can see in the graph on the right, most of the world's oil supplies peaked in the mid nineties with the total world supply fighting like heck not to peak right now. Some estimated it peaked back in the latter part of 2005 and is just hovering at the same production levels right now. What does this mean? It means that like Natural Gas, we are continuing to use a resource at an ever increasing level, while the resource itself is in ever decreasing supply. And that means: HIGHER PRICES.

So, what would I as the Supreme Leader of the United States of America do about this problem? (I know I will get tore several new ones for this) we must stop driving extremely wasteful vehicles. I would (effective in one year as usual) outlaw passenger vehicles that get less than 25 miles per gallon gasoline and 30 mpg diesel based on actual driving conditions. Individuals and companies wishing to obtain or to continue using large pickups and SUV's would file for a permit based on actual necessity of use. Motorcycles could not get less than 40 mpg.

Additionally, all internal combustion engine vehicles would be required to use only fully synthetic motor oils, gear oils, and greases. This would save gas mileage and allow cars to remain in service for a longer period of time while the economy adjusts to the severe shock.

As a result of all this, I believe that the gas prices would fall in short order, once supply ballooned above demand. However once my new emissions restrictions on oil wells and refining plants took effect, those prices could come back up a bit.

I would also (with props to the ZEV mandate of CARB) require all car companies to be selling 10% of thier total vehicles as electric vehicles in 5 years with 50% in 10 years (tractor trailers excluded, though they'd be required to come up with some hybrids that increased mileage by 20%.) I'd mandate that the company that owns the patents to the large format NiMH (here unamed) to allow it's use in fully electric vehicles with only a nominal fee.

I know these are some radical ideas, and even I cringe when I read what I've read, but this is a quick progression toward a sustainable society, and burning oil is not sustainable. Therefore, we must include greater numbers of fuel sources so that the sudden absence of one does not greatly affect the others. For instance, if we could simultaneously raise and lower the utilization of biodiesel and diesel fuel respectively till the 50/50 level is reached, then a healthy drop in the supply of either will be tempered by the other. This is the same reason electricity prices rise slower than fuels. There are myriad sources of electricity, but very few of fuels.

Wow, that hurt.
WiredForStereo

Next: Electricity reform.