I predict that converting from gallons to liters isn’t something that will happen anytime soon.
First, we Americans don’t believe in the occult, space aliens or the metric system. Second, it would cost a fortune to convert all of those pesky gas pumps…
Ha! As soon as I saw the thread title, I thought $1? Maybe if we switch to litres!
Brilliant!
I don’t think $4/gal will be that har to swallow on the way back down from the $5/gal I think we’ll be paying by august. My prediction is that we’ll hit 4 in june and spend the summer creeping up every weekend. Good times.
In the 1970s, I remember that some of the pumps couldn’t be set for more than 99.9 cents per unit dispensed. I also remember two solutions – switching the units dispensed to half-gallons, or to liters. However, the prices were still posted on the big signs in cost per gallon – e.g. 55.9 /half gallon was posted as 111.8 cents per gallon. This was one of the few times when I saw gas sold for something other than a .9 cent/gallon price.
One year my family went on vacation to Niagra Falls, Ontario. My father couldn’t get over how cheap gas was. He also got stoped for speeding 3 times. Sadly I don’t see the Americans embracing the metric system anytime soon. Is it even legal to sell gas by the liter now? After Katrina PA gas stations had to get special permission to sell gas by the half gallon.
NOT True… Aliens are real
Gas is never going down, liters gallons or otherwise. We seem to just keep buying it so why would the oil rollers knock it back down?
Most stations have already bought big 3’s so the investment was already made. If we have another shock, like a lot of our infrastructure knocked down by a hurricane, big 4’s are still far cheaper then converting the pumps to metric.
Also people resent prices not being clear. Driving down the street you see a station selling gas for $2.69, another for $2.71 and a 3rd selling it for $0.89 - even if there is a way to indicate that price is in liters, and you see it from the street - I would bet that most people would pull into the $2.69, and fewest in the $0.89, the reason is that the driving public does not know the conversion and even if they remembered how they are not going to do a math equation before they make their decision.
They wouldn’t have to convert it to metric. They could just use quarts. But I still don’t see us switching to quarts either. Gas buyers are a captive audience, and are essentially forced to pay whatever it costs. It’s not a market like any other.
Besides, I have to think that people are smarter than to think a gallon of gas is less than a dollar. It may not be true, but I’d like to think it.
There are at least two different gallons. The US gallon is about 3.8 litres; the old imperial gallon (formerly used in the UK and its colonial outposts like Australia) is about 4.5 litres. Similarly there are different quarts and pints, becauise they are 1/4 and 1/8 of a gallon in both systems. And there are two different fluid ounces: the US fluid ounce is about 29.6 ml and the imperial fluid ounce is about 28.4 ml. In both systems the ounce is the same, at about 28.4 g, so I don’t understand the different fluid ounces, except that in the US system it’s 1/128 of a gallon and in the imperial system it’s 1/160 of a gallon.
In my town in the 1970s there were a few stations that posted prices in liters. It was a simple scam. If gas would be $1.00 per gallon, these stations would post at $0.45 per liter. (Wow, cheap. Hey, wait a minute.) People catch on pretty quick. I wonder if this sort of thing partially explains the aversion to the metric system. The sleaziest men in the industry embraced it quickly and spoiled it in the minds of the public.