Yup.
[saunters laconically into the sunset to feed Thunder, the wonder llama]
I’ve got this little '69 Triumph Spitfire in my garage just waiting for a conversion to a battery electric car. My goal is 50/50. 50 mph, and 50 mile range. I may have to beef up the springs a bit. Then I can leave my 1/2 ton 4 door pickup sitting in the driveway until I really need the beast (which is almost never). But when I need it, it is very useful.
http://www.nysun.com/news/business/gas-price-may-soon-cost-sawbuck Heres ba story about a couple experts predicting 10 dollar a gallon gas. That would change things a little.
What sort of small commuter car (other than a Prius) costs $30k? And if economizing is important, surely you are not going to buy a new car and lose thousands on day one of ownership? How about a 3 year old Honda Civic for under ten grand?
Yes, I could do something like that, but that wouldn’t be my first choice.
I’ve been over and over all the cars out there, and I just really don’t like very many. I don’t buy a car very often, and my wife finally said “Oh, I get it, you want to be in LOVE.” She’s probably right. I’d rather drive my '86 Mustang GT Convertible (195K miles) or my F-350 (213K miles) than some newer car that I don’t like.
But, I may be forced to compromise.
I can understand that - those are the honest reasons! I don’t get the truck part (I’m English - we don’t do trucks), but I can certainly understand sticking with a car that’s fun.
I’ve definitely started pricing scooters. I could easily do my morning commute to school on a Vespa, at least on the days it doesn’t rain. At 60+ mpg, it would pay for itself quickly, especially at $5+ gas prices. We’d keep the Frontier, but only use it for grocery shopping and the odd trip out.
If the guys gonzomax cites are even remotely correct, we, and the rest of the world, are totally fucked. The push to produce alternative fuels will drive food production down (as well as making it more expensive), which will seriously impact the export of food from the US. We will be seriously hurting, but the LDCs are going to go up in flames.
Why is REM running through my head?
Nobody here seems to want to actually revolt. Suppose you wanted to throw a pie in the faces of the actual people who are ultimately setting the prices. Who are they? Name names.
That’s because most of the cost of fuel in the UK is tax.
Your neighbor. Your father. Your boss and your coworkers. Maybe even yourself. Anybody who is invested in a mutual fund or retirement account that is invested in an oil company. The market is driving the increased prices because demand is up. Therefore, anybody invested in a publicly traded energy company with the hope of getting a return on investment is ultimately responsible for the price increases.
Besides, there is no possibility of revolting. Who or what would you be revolting against? There’s no evil monolithic structure, no sinister person orchestrating this, it’s the “invisible hand” compensating for a shortage. This is Econ 101 stuff, man. You may as well shout at the clouds for raining on you for all the difference it would make.
Any politician that voted against any oil drilling or oil processing project. And for those people who want an electric vehicle, any politician who voted against nuclear power plants.
Well then, we might have part of our answer there. We need to divest from mutual funds that contain oil company stock!
No, Otto. Ruffian is a perfectly fine name for a female. (Some people got no sense of history) When she was being presented for the first time, a reporter questioned a name of Ruffian for a filly. Barbara Janney quipped, “Girls can be ruffians, too!”
I had a Ask the AFV driver thread a couple weeks ago that sank like a stone. It’s by no means the perfect solution, but it works for me.
Even though your are correct (in the context of this thread), I completely disagree with this: “…voted against any oil drilling”
Drilling for more oil in the US is only going to delay the inevitable. We should be sucking the Mideast dry, and preserving our own resources, so that when things get really desperate, we’ll have a guaranteed supply. Hopefully we will have developed alternative sources in the meantime. Promoting domestic drilling is just short-sighted.
I’ll disagree with your disagree. I think we should drill our way to short term freedom and invent something that is tree-hugger proof in the meantime. Instead of pouring money into a terrorist rat hole we could be keeping/investing money in companies in this country. We get more jobs in the deal.
I saw a show on bio-diesel made from algae that was grown in vertical towers. Of course, the claim was made that all our energy needs could be met by growing this in the US and I don’t want to argue it’s validity. But come on, there’s got to be something out there that can be fast-tracked to reality in a year. I want a Manhattan Project for fuel NOW. What part of frickin NOW do you politicians not understand. Go to Lockheed skunkworks, tell them you want a production facility in 365 days, write a big honking check, and leave them alone. Make it something that oil and car companies can integrate into their production nodes so it doesn’t wipe out industries that have a real presence. It’s going to take years to fully realize any solution that is created so we need the solution NOW.
Hahahaha. Can you say “Cost-plus”? Anybody who has the ability or the means to even envision something of the scale that you’re talking about has the country by the balls. You think oil is expensive? Wait until you see the bill for that. Lockheed takes the Air Force to the cleaners with every plane. Imagine if we entrusted them with something like that.
Believe it or not (and I can’t believe that I’m saying this), government institutions are best suited for what you envision. The Department of Energy might be able to come up with something in a few years with an unlimited budget, and it’ll be a damn sight cheaper than if you contract it out.
Let’s see… when is the last time I purchased gasoline?..
September 2007 on our holiday. We had a rental car for three days.
Biking 9 miles to work in the winter sucked, but it was doable.
I’ve worked at gas stations in various parts of California for 5 years. Higher gas prices have never correlated with less volume sold. If anything, consumption goes up because the increases tend to happen during summer driving months. Now, we’re holding steady in volume despite charging $3.91 for regular…
Joe
Oh, c’mon. That’s a pretty tenuous link, Doors. If someone invests in an index fund, are they responsible for every company on the Nasdaq/DJI/whatever? Oil companies make money from gas, sure. Plastic manufacturing needs petroleum as well, so anyone who watches a football game (all those chin guards and helmets!) is responsible for gas prices, no? Oh, and all those manufacturers of furnaces that run on oil (and investors in those manufacturers), them too, right?
I sense you’re taking a ridiculous position to make a point, but consider me whooshed. I know you had a thread (which I cited, above) that said anyone who suspects price gouging is Q.E.D. a moron, so I assume you’re calling folks out who want to find someone to blame, and say everyone is to blame. But you can only take that so far, see examples above. Investing in a company does not make that company successful. It can drive up the stock price, but it doesn’t guarantee a profit or viability. See Enron.
Man, I don’t think so. The A/F made a project out of something as simple as the C5-A. The engines were a fiasco of AF mandated engineering. Lockheed knocked out the SR-71 in record time and that was a marvel of technology.