[Kosh]

Appproximately how much have gas (or "petrol" if you're from England) prices gone up over the last few months in your area? And what area (city, county, province, country, whatever) do you live in?



I'm just interested in seeing where the prices have gone up the most and the least.

[phreak]

about 2.55 a gal.  which isn't too terrible since my car gets 30mpg and needs to refuel every 2-3 weeks

[brugger]

right now I pay between 2.50 and 2.75 dollars a gallon up about .75 from a month ago

When i first started driving only five years ago it cost .95 a gallon.

[Rictor]

I read in the paper a breakdown of the world's gas prices. The highest prices (in dollars) were in the Netherlands and Belgium at around $6.50 and the cheapest in Venezuela at $0.20 and Saudi Arabia at $0.90. That's taxes for you, ya dirty Scandinavian commies.

In Canada it's hovering around $1.00 CAD, and everyone is pissed off. I don't drive, so I don't care.

[CP5670]

I think it was $2.65/gal here a few days ago. I don't pay much attention to it as I hardly go anywhere anyway.

[redmenace]

In other news, everyone decides its the oil companies fault

[Goober5000]

Milk is about $3.79 a gallon...

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Rictor
I read in the paper a breakdown of the world's gas prices. The highest prices (in dollars) were in the Netherlands and Belgium at around $6.50 and the cheapest in Venezuela at $0.20 and Saudi Arabia at $0.90. That's taxes for you, ya dirty Scandinavian commies.

In Canada it's hovering around $1.00 CAD, and everyone is pissed off. I don't drive, so I don't care.

Here regular unleaded costs around $2.59 per gallon. That is up about $0.30 or so compared to a few months ago.

In other news, everyone decides its the oil companies fault

Well, they are the ones making record profits as oil and gas prices are rising high.

But the ones who are to blame the most are the Americans.

And the Netherlands and Belgium are not Scandinavian countries.

[Omniscaper]

$33.25 to fill a tank of a 2002 Honda Civic. WTF

Nice to know that Hybrids are now getting the horsepower to be seriously considered by the masses.

I'm looking forward to hydrogen fuel cell research proceed to practical application.

[redmenace]

Originally posted by Kosh
Well, they are the ones making record profits as oil and gas prices are rising high.

So, the supply is dwindling, and the demand is growing. However, I will say is that they have not been modernizing and refitting their refineries as they should. At least now they shouldn't have any real excuse as far as I can tell. Lets not forget China as well. Their energy requirements are growing quickly.

[aldo_14]

99p a litre for unleaded.  So about £3.75 a gallon.  It cost me over 30 quid to fill up my car the last time, I think.

I'm always amused when Americans think their petrol is expensive, because it's far from it.  Of course, the Us has an image - I'm not sure how true it is - of being full of inefficient gas guzzling 'big' cars compared to, say, Europe or Japan.  Last time I was in the states I never saw a single hatchback, but then again that was quite some time ago.

[Singh]

I don't pay for Petrol.....I take the public transport

[NGTM-1R]

Too frickin' much, which is up from the previous "too much".

[MatthewPapa]

I pay 2.70/gal here. Its highway robbery considering that I live in houston which has one of the largest petrochemical industries in the nation.

[WeatherOp]

Originally posted by Omniscaper
Nice to know that Hybrids are now getting the horsepower to be seriously considered by the masses.

I'm looking forward to hydrogen fuel cell research proceed to practical application.

This was posted when we had this topic on another forum. Pretty interesting.

BY BROCK YATES,


 I'm not exactly a betting man, but I'll give you 100 to 1 odds that if you're reading this nonsense you are not a hybrid-car owner. That's probably a good wager, considering that the new miracle vehicles are stuck at about a one-half-percent market share of the roughly 17 million annual new car and light-truck domestic sales and that you are vastly more likely to tear up the asphalt in a gas-swilling, earth-choking, mega-speed road rocket like the rest of us motorized Neanderthals.

Of course, if we pay attention to the Cassandra-like fulminations of the liberal media, we might be led to believe that hybrid vehicles are our only hope to save us all from ozone asphyxiation and indentured slavery to the Arab oil barons. To ignore their PC incantations and to continue our binge buying of conventional internal-combustion engines will, according to these all-knowing scribes and electronic chatterers, doom civilization to a dark age embroiled in a heat-soaked Sahara.

Yeah, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Yes, we understand the feds are giving a one-time $2000 tax credit to hybrid owners, and 16 states are offering come-on tax breaks ($1500 in Oregon, $4173 in Colorado), inspection exemptions, and single-driver use of HOV lanes as incentives.

Moreover, the hybrids being sold by Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Ford, and, soon, Chevrolet are all reasonably priced. Example: The hot-selling Toyota Prius—with a three-month waiting list in most markets—can be purchased for under $22,000 loaded (although most experts estimate that Toyota is taking a $2000 hit on each sale). The Pious—oops—Prius costs about $5000 more to manufacture than a conventional Corolla and retails for about three-grand extra.

Now let's jump ugly about the whole situation and talk a little reality. The guys at Edmunds.com, who run hard numbers about the car business as well as anyone, estimate that a Prius owner would have to drive at least 66,500 miles annually for five straight years, or gasoline would have to soar to 10 bucks a gallon, to equal the cost of operating a cheaper, conventional Corolla.

Then we have the battery pack, that heavy lump of nickel-metal hydride juice boxes that presumably improve fuel efficiency (but not that much, according to our road tests). Although the warranties are for eight years or 100,000 miles, battery replacement will cost $5300 for the Toyota and Lexus hybrids, and the Ford Escape replacements run a whopping $7200.

Moreover, the industry types aren't talking about total battery life. Will they actually last 100,000 miles? How will this affect resale value? Will the systems stay at full efficiency, or will they slowly drain power as they age or operate under heavy use? These are questions that remain to be answered, understanding that storage batteries, be they dry cells in your flashlight or exotic Ni-MHs, all have finite lives and store less power with age.

And now comes word that the computer brain inside the gas-electric grids in some Priuses is tending to go nuts. This causes instant blackout stalling at either 35 mph or 65 mph—the latter possibly in the fast lane of an interstate where 50-ton semis running 90 mph can crush compacts like beer cans.

This brings up an undiscussed issue: At some point, all these hybrid batteries will die and have to be disposed of somewhere, somehow. These are hardly biodegradable items like spoiled vegetables. They are in fact self-contained toxic waste dumps. How and where millions of these poisonous boxes will be deposited in the new hybrid nirvana has yet to be considered, much less resolved.

And speaking of the environmental component (the glamour issue centered on the brave new world of hybrids), a number of EMT and fire crews have announced that they will refuse to rescue victims trapped in such vehicles, openly fearing electrocution or fatal acid burns.

As with the now-defunct electric-car miracle, where it was quickly realized that the national power grid could not energize millions of vehicles without massive expansion of horrors—nuclear generation—the dark side of the hybrid miracle is now beginning to surface.

Says a dealer friend whose immense franchise network includes several brands offering hybrids: "There is no advantage to owning a hybrid in terms of fuel mileage when the extra cost of the vehicle is added in. Period. Do the math. This is a feel-good purchase. Hybrids are a statement about the environment, and they simply do not square with economic reality.

"The truth is, although the Prius is selling like mad, hybrid Honda Accords and Civics are backed up on dealer lots. Why? Because they look like conventional Hondas, whereas the Prius has unique styling. It has an iconic status among the Greenies. Like it or not, that's real life."

Until hybrids become economically feasible in terms of cost, reliability, and valid fuel savings and make real sense regarding performance and disposability, we're going to be driving conventional internal-combustion-powered vehicles—either gas or diesel —until rogue asteroids clean us all out.

And gas prices around here is about $2.55 a gallon.

[delta_7890]

Originally posted by aldo_14
99p a litre for unleaded.  So about £3.75 a gallon.  It cost me over 30 quid to fill up my car the last time, I think.

I'm always amused when Americans think their petrol is expensive, because it's far from it.  Of course, the Us has an image - I'm not sure how true it is - of being full of inefficient gas guzzling 'big' cars compared to, say, Europe or Japan.  Last time I was in the states I never saw a single hatchback, but then again that was quite some time ago.

Eh, it's not THAT bad, at least here in the North-east.  SUVs are about as popular as any place else, but more often I see regular sedans, trucks, things of that sort.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by delta_7890


Eh, it's not THAT bad, at least here in the North-east.  SUVs are about as popular as any place else, but more often I see regular sedans, trucks, things of that sort.

Ah, but what's the mpg of them?  I don't mean SUVs, specifically, though.

[karajorma]

Sedans qualify as inefficient gas guzzling 'big' cars BTW Ccompared with the European and Japanese small cars at least

[EtherShock]

They're not nearly as bad as SUV's though. A lot of people drive SUVs, but it's not like the 50's where everyone drove a gas-guzzler. However, the mileage on those things is horrendous, and at least in the 50's, they didn't drive big, ugly squares. The thing is, everyone complains about gas prices here, but they do nothing to ease the demand.

Weather, hybrid technology is in its infancy, of course there will be issues until they work all the kinks out, the first automobiles had their fair share of problems at first. It's also only an intermediate until we get fuel cells going, but the technology will be perfected by that time. Furthermore, couldn't the batteries simply be recycled?

I hardly know how much gas has gone up, since I don't go out often. I just know it's worse outside the Northeast.

[Kazan]

Originally posted by brugger
right now I pay between 2.50 and 2.75 dollars a gallon up about .75 from a month ago

When i first started driving only five years ago it cost .95 a gallon.

same here

and i have to fuel up every 4 business days