FUEL MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CAR

if you're using 20 gallons/day, 10 each way, and you're getting 20mpg's, that's a 400 mile r/t commute. you should probably consider moving closer to work.

 

You are in Sacramento, so you are probably watching a campaign ad or one of the incredibly terrible morning news channels we have here. But that's not my point.

My point is, sometime I follow a Volt forum, and it's amazing to me how many people absolutely HATE the Volt (and probably the PiP) because of the partisan politics they subscribe to.

We are talking about almost $5/gal, and these people refuse to believe that we could invest in a new industry that could potentially save our economy and the environment.

$415 a week / 7 days a week / $5 high estimate per gallon * 20 low estimate on mpg = 237 miles per day. Unless you're a truck driver. I call bullshit.

 

if not now, when? oil won't last forever. why do we always have to wait for a crisis to get things done?

 

They always interview the guy in the lifted pickup who can complain about why his 6mpg overcompensation-mobile is so expensive to fill up and drive...

They never interview the Prius who is only at the gas station for something other than gas...

 

exactly. or the person working at walmarts and driving a tahoe.

 

Winston Churchill once said that you can always count on America to do the right thing....after they've tried everything else. Given the fact that he's been taking the loooooong dirt nap for almost 50 years now America's rather unique (??) response to crisis management isn't anything new.
The real question: Is it a crisis?
I'm sure that Angelinos might think so...since they have to pay north of five bucks a gallon for gas however (comma!) I would submit that this is due in part to other forms of crisis management. For example....I paid $3.35/gal this weekend for gas.
Certainly not the buck eighty I fondly remember from three and a half years ago.....and certainly NOT the <$1 that I remember from a few years before that, but it's certainly manageable....especially since I live a little less than 10 miles from where I work.
As we all (should) know by now, the folks on the left coast have to pay a higher amount for gas because of local legislation both in the forms of higher taxes and the designer blends of gasoline that they're forced to burn out there.
People have been screaming about the fact that oil is about to run out since Winston Churchill was actually alive.
(yawn!)
Next crisis, please!

The reason why people intuitively wait for a crisis to implement crisis management? Well......maybe it's because we so often screw the pooch when we put leap before look.
Example: Climate change.
Anybody remember some of the daffy "solutions" that were proposed during the 70's to mitigate climate change?
While we're on the subject of the 70's.....anybody remember the population bomb? The fact that we're dead-bang certain to be out of oil before the year 2000???
When I worked for the government in the 90's, my company was awarded a fairly LARGE federal contract to ensure that software and firmware used by my beloved government was Y2K Compliant. As a matter of fact....one of my first taskers when I transferred to the telecom industry was to make sure that the Y2K "bomb" didn't affect local telecommunications. The only negative effect I observed was having to work on New Year's day that day.

The simple fact is that our government LOOOOVES crisis management! There's a famous example of the Chinese characters for the word "crisis" being a combination of those for danger and opportunity. The Forth Amendment hacks in this country have been screeching for years about our willingness to exchange some freedoms and privacy for enhanced security. And on.....and on....

The simple truth is that you can probably get an ICE to burn peanut butter if you could figure out how to squeeze it through the injectors. I strongly suspect that once we run out of dead dinosaurs to burn? We'll probably be able to figure out how to use some other form of personal conveyance to get ourselves down to the local (or NOT so local!) Whole Foods to get that Himalayan Pink Sea Salt to sprinkle on our supper...

 

At the risk of topic drift, people say "look at all the hoopla about Y2K, and nothing happened". Well, could it be that all the work to mitigate the issue actually succeeded in preventing a meltdown? I am in the software industry, and there was all sorts of nasty stuff waiting to happen due to two-digit year codes that obviously got taken care of in time, due to the "hoopla". It wasn't a false alarm; it was a real alarm that was appropriately responded to and thus averted the "bomb".

 

I retired my SUV to the ranch. I was spending $15/day for gasoline and leased a Volt for $12/day.

I used 1 gallon of gas in September for 1400 miles.

 

Oh look, the snow forecast fallacy. How original. Since the weatherman has been wrong about the snow for the past 10 times, it will therefore never snow again. Yawn.

Those of us who worked hard to ensure that nothing DID happen on 1/1/2000, really hate it when people imply that nothing would have happened if we hadn't done the work.

 

It's always easy to justify any expense to have averted a cataclysm that didn't happen, or to avoid a catastrophe that 'might' happen. I spent quite a few bongo-bucks when I worked for Uncle Sugar preventing the Rompin' Stompin' Red-Arsed Rooskies from invading the United States.
The former Soviet Union never (directly) attacked us.....so....it was all money that was well spent....right?
Well.....OK.
Maybe not.

The title of this thread is a perfect example of using emotion mixed with a little irrelevant fact to amplify a problem into a crisis...or create a problem from nothing at all.
For example.....I'm in the process of rebuilding a house. I guestimate that it will take about three kilobucks to wire it for electricity. If I presume that electricity will be at least as expensive as it is now throughout the life cycle of the dwelling...why bother???---since I will obviously spend more in electricity than it will cost to wire the house!!!!
My carry weapon is a small frame Smith (.357) which costs me around $350. Anybody who knows anything about firearms will quickly agree with me that it will take a lot more then $350 worth of ammo to attain and maintain proficiency with this sidearm.....so why bother if the ammunition costs more than the pistol?

I've seen dozens of arguments asserting that the pip (Pip? PIP? PiP?) is a worthwhile investment despite the fact that the cost of the additional efficiency gained by this model may not be paid back purely by the money that you save at the pump....same goes for the aftermarket PHEV kits. Same goes for the Leaf.

Sorry.
I'm just a hard sell on Angelinos temporarily paying North of $5 a gallon for gas so that they can commute crazy distances to and from their single family detached dwellings as the next big "crisis" in America.
Speaking of "Yawn..."
I'll put in a wake-up call for when gas gets to be $20-$40 a gallon.....THAT's when I'll have to think about moving closer to town.

I was ONE of them---remember?
If the weatherperson goes on TV every day and says it's going to snow like hell, and you'd better spend all of your savings on plows, sand, salt, extra food, etc...or you will DIE...and it keeps not happening....pretty soon the TV station is going to get another weather person....

 

Indeed. The real issue was the fact that some governments overeacted. (I did some Y2K programming. Yes, things would have gone wrong if they hadn't have been fixed. Fortunately the fixes were simple, which makes it annoying that assumptions were made in the first place. The other annoying thing for many contract programmers in the UK is that so many programmers went chasing the Y2K contract money that tax laws were changed to make it harder for 1-employer contractors to claim they aren't an employee.)

 

Maybe your fixes were simple. I agree that it was a stupid problem to have; no foresight at all. Just like now. No one can imagine that a finite resource and exponential usage rate could ever possibly lead to shortages. Imagine that.

 

That is true, even outside of California's latest price spike.

I'm not sure when the realization came to me, but it was no later than Hurricane Katrina: the lifetime fuel bill of my household's (non-hybrid) cars exceeded their initial purchase prices, even after adjusting for inflation. And these were all relatively fuel efficient four cylinder cars, not products of the modern horsepower wars or SUV bloat.

 

I've observed fast food restaurant worker getting out of their battering ram of death class SUV. I forget if it was a Dodge Durango or a Tahoe/Yukon.

Yeah, that's usually the case, but our local news recently did interview a Prius driver at a very expensive gas station (in Cupertino, well over $5/gal), IIRC. He said he hadn't planned and thus just needed enough gas to get home.

 

So how long will it take in CA for dealers to stop accepting SUVs in trade and Prius inventory to sell at MSRP or better? There's still time to get in line for that Model S.