I got gas in San Francisco yesterday. 89 octane was $1.68 a gallon! Cost me over $25 to fill the tank. I think I’ll go back to riding a bike.
High gas prices are good. It’s time for alternatives.
When I drove in the Netherlands last year I thought gas prices would kill me - they didn’t. The high gas prices in Europe are offset by three facts: Almost all the vehicles get WAY better mileage, the population density and tiny size of nations keep driving distances down, and public transportation is great.
European cars with great gas mileage sounds very attractive until you actually look at them. I mean, I’ve never seen so many ugly vehicles on the road at one time. Everything looked flimsy and stunted: completely out of proportion. God forbid you hit anything (like a newspaper) while driving one of those toys.
I think the European exception is Germany - now there are some real cars!
Hell is Other People.
Yup, that’s it. US servicemembers in Europe get to purchase fuel coupons that we can use at certain European gas stations to get out of paying the tax. The last time I bought them, I paid about $18 for 40 liters, or very roughly $1.70 a gallon. I didn’t bother looking at the German prices (too depressing!), but I think they are about the same as in the Netherlands.
You don’t see as many vans or SUVs here, but Sake Samurai is right, German cars are cool, although they do have their fair share of small, fuel efficient vehicles.
Oh wow, I feel so guilty, I came into this thread aghast at the thought of paying $1.70 for a gallon of gas, and I was ticked at paying $1.14 today at Chevron because it $1.12 yesterday. I’ll not grumble anymore…well, at least not at gas prices! I think it is about the taxes too, as was mentioned already. Down here in Atlanta, depending on your county, it can be as little as 5 cents. It is 6 cents here in Gwinnett county.
I hope it shocks the SUVer’s enough to put down their cell phones, and save some money somewhere.
“Consider it a challenge…”
$1.70 is nothing too terrible. I saw that last spring out here in southern CA; some places were over $2.00.
This is one reason why I’m glad I drive an economy car. At 30 miles to the gallon, a gas price increase means little more than a $5-$10 difference in gas cost for me.
But I do like big cars that go vrroooom.
formerly known as LauraRae
I’m a Raggety Ann in a Barbie Doll world.
By the way, I meant a $5-$10 difference in monthly gas cost. Der.
I don’t mind the hike so much since my commute was halved a few months ago (new job). In fact, I halfway-almost-wish there’d be a sustained increase in real, at-the-pump costs for fuel. Like maybe to US$2.50/gal or so. Then, as was pointed out in an earlier post, maybe Ford, Chevy, and so on would sell fewer of those giant “sport-utes,” and there could be a return to rationality in car buying. I work for a large biomedical firm here in SoCal., and it positively horrifies me to see the numbers of huge vehicles capable of seating seven overweight American adults in the parking lot. Of course, it’s practically unAmerican to carpool.
To sport-ute owners everywhere:
For commuting, you do not need 400HP; you do not need to seat seven. To get groceries, likewise. There are certain limited uses for such vehicles, but most of the sport-utes on the highways are far to well-kept to actually have ever been used for any of them. I have commuted forty miles one way to work, and stopped to do grocery shopping on the way home, in a two-seater car which produced a grand total of 87 HP, and never wanted for more power or space. It also ran quite cleanly, despite the fact that it was over 20 years old, and got over 30 miles per gallon, even when driven quite hard. (Damn, I miss that car. I wish I had never sold it.)
Folks, if it’s conspicuous consumption you’re after, there’re plenty of luxurious, ostentatious, well-respected, small cars out there.
Funny, we usually think American cars are ugly. Here in The Netherlands, most American cars are considered tacky. I do not agree all the time, but I would have to say most American cars are rather ugly. Must be a cultural thing.
Tatertot: Dutch fuel prices are about 15% higher than German prices.
And who was that that filled up with 89 octane?? Man, that stuff isn’t even available anymore over here! You can get 95 and 98, both unleaded. For old-fashioned engines, you have to add a bottle of lead replacement for every time you fill up.
While in South Africa I noticed many different octane levels, but none lower than 91. We actually had to fill up our 95 octane Nissan Sentra (it was a rental, not my car of choice per se, but for 2 weeks, it was well enough) with 93 once because we were all empty and the middle-of-nowhere gas station did not have anything better… the car stuttered the entire tank long, and never drove as well after that.
I’m sure 89 would kill my cars engine (it requires 95). Is 89 for vintage cars only?
Coldfire
"You know how complex women are"
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
Holy Cow!!!
I just looked at the Florida CPG on the website link provided above and it sure looks like this State slaps the most taxes on fuel!
Americans, I must reluctantly admit, have this THING about gas guzzling, big heavy cars and SUVs. After the last gas crisis eased from the 70s, I started noting the slowdown in the sales and design of smaller, feul miserly cars and the sharp increase in the sales of bigger cars. THEN came the SUV craze with their not exactly economically designed motors and I started looking for the NEXT gas crunch to happen.
I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that if America EVER manages to develop and accept a really fuel economic car that the BIG OIL companies, wincing over lost profits, will STILL elevate the cost of gas to compensate.
Though, I still recall being able to drive up to a FULL SERVICE gas station and not get thrown out of the place by ordering FIFTY CENTS worth of gas, which was enough to go cruising with. But, then, I also recall paying 35 cents for a pack of smokes, gas wars and when the parking lot in high school looked more or less like a used car lot instead of a show room of new cars.
What? Me worry?’
I think Ross Perot wanted to tax our gas to help pay off our debt. Sounded like a good idea to me at the time, and still does.
I am a big fan of renewable energy, and quite frankly, think we will look back at the 20th century and wonder how we could do what we did to the earth.
Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse.
Last month, Dec. 99, I paid $1.79/gal. in Mad River, CA (between Redding & Eureka). Low on fuel, I had no choice. I hadn’t seen a gas station for many hours. The most that I had ever paid! (up to now)
Zymurgist
Coldfire:
Part of the difference in octane ratings you’re noticing may be due to differences in testing procedures. There are two main techniques, Method and Research. don’t know the actual technical details of the two techniques, but they give quite different numbers, and neither is actually a true indication of how much of the chemical octane is in the fuel. I have heard that, because of these differences, European gasolines (and possibly those in other parts of the word) are rated higher than the same fuel would be here in the states. In California, anyway, each pump is required to display the octane rating and the method used to get the rating; I also think that the only method allowed is to take the average of the Method and Research ratings (R+M/2).
Many modern automobile engines are designed to create a compression ratio of 10:1 or more, and thus require higher-octane fuel in order to prevent preignition. Contrary to poular belief, higher-octane fuel is not better for a car, and will not produce more power, unless the engine is designed for it. In fact, both my car and my wife’s car have noticably more power when burning 87-octane fuel than when burning 89 or 92.
A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.
With the Saudi’s happily screwing the world over fuel prices and major oil companies happily screwing us even further, I’m a big fan of renewable resources and have my doubts about the problems they had with ‘gasohol’ years back. A mechanic friend told me that it ate a coating off of the needle valves in carburetors after a while, but I figure Detroit could have come up with a better coating had they not been in bed with big oil.
For decades, people had been discussing using cheaply made fuels like alcohol for cars and such and propane was big on the list – but suddenly propane jumped from being the cheapest gas to one of the most expensive -$2.25 a gallon. Alcohol IS cleaner and leaves none of the crappy pollutants filling the air, but, somehow, each time someone comes up with a seemingly workable alcohol motor or process, it kind of vanishes.
I must admit that it did surprise the hell out of me when I discovered that major banks, world wide, were investing in oil futures, which I consider a radically unstable market. Though, exercising my right as an American to see the ‘conspiracy’ in everything government related, I can see where they would not want cheap, alcohol fuel or anything else, available on the market.
There is an electric car running around here that some guy built during the early 1970s and it is STILL on the road! That impressed me because of its durability. It doesn’t go real fast or have a very long range BUT, considering that it was built before all of the technological advances in batteries and Teflon gears and solar panels, it is quite remarkable.
I’ve seen those little ‘ugly’ foreign cars and they have their good points. One is that they are cheap and easy to produce and kind of cool. Some have innovations we could use, like one I saw where you enter from the back because it is a small box and it has simple preformed seats along each side and two buckets in the front.
An English version, I think, opens from the front, runs on three wheels and is super compact. I’ve seen the German motorcycle cars, featured some years ago in Popular Mechanics, with their automatic stabilizers that extend whenever their speed slows for stopping. We could use them here.
One advantage to most of those small cars is that they don’t go like 120 mph like American cars do so any collisions will be a lower speeds, making them just as ‘safe’ as the high speed cars in comparison. PLUS they get something like 30 or 40 miles per gallon of gas. (Now, I don’t know if they have A/c or not, because I never thought to check it out.)
America started the BIG CAR thing and now we’re driving ourselves nuts trying to make them lighter and more crash resistant at the same time to save fuel and lives. (I remember the big, old 54 Fords. Crash one of those and roll it over and it hardly got dented, but it got something like 6 or 8 miles to the gallon and while the car would survive the crash, the occupants, bouncing around the hard interior, probably would not.)
I’m watching the new Japanese battery/conventional motor car with interest. IF that becomes a hit, and IF they are allowed to import it to the US, WATCH the gas prices soar!
Well, guys. I don’t drive. I don’t know anything about alternative fuels. I don’t care about people that drive SUVs.
But if gas prices go up anymore ($1.38 today), I’m gonna have a problem.
You see, my beloved, generous, caring fiancé drives eight hours (roundtrip picking me up and returning me home) every two weeks so that we can be together. If any of you are in the Houston/Huntsville/Conroe area, you know that 45 has been under construction since August. One lane. Until April.
This means that my loving, darling, adorable sweetheart flops on my bed every other week, exhausted, and complains about traffic. And then, every other week, on the way home, he shells out just about $25 for gas. And I can’t afford to give him the money.
If prices go up too far before that freeway gets fixed, I don’t think I can handle the guilt. 
I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!
Well, after looking at this thread, I’ve learned two things:
[list=1][li]Gas prices vary more across the country than I thought. And…[/li][li]Well, I guess there is no #2[/list=1][/li]The guy over at the board is identified as coming from Maine (If you thought there were too much info displayed <-- here…)
Apparantly after years of assing around, OPEC finally got their heads together and cut production.
I’m surprised that the conspiracy nuts over there haven’t started crying <font size=4 color=red>“Y2K, Y2K!”</font>
Anyway, I wonder if anyone else seen new comercials for that gas/electric hybrid car?
This thread has not been destroyed by SterlingNorth.