Tell us how much you’re spending on gas right now!
In Kerrville TX regular gas is at $3.09, lower then US.
I understand the supply and demand issue. What I question is the electric cars/trucks. Here’s just a couple of reasons why I don’t believe this will get a footing in the USA.
- The infrastructure is no way near prepared of this endeavor. If it’s not convenient to charge your batteries while traveling… it won’t fly.
- The range is low… 400 +/- miles per charge.
- The time it takes to charge is way too long.
- The expense to charge is high.
- What happens to the batteries when they are no longer working? Where do you dump them?
- The cost of new batteries?
- Americans are used to convenience…
Just my thoughts… TC
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In our case, we have an EV and a tradition ICE vehicle so we are just driving the electric car every day now. Working at home we don’t really use 2 cars at the same time anyway. We only really need the other car if we are traveling more than 200 miles in a day. With a 220v outlet in the garage, its no trouble re-charging the EV overnight.
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I drive very little since I retired and my bicycle is a big part of my retirement. I have a discount card thru my grocery store, but I really don’t pay much attention to the price per gallon. It costs me between $30 and $35 to fill my tank and so far this year I have spent $64 on gas. On our bike ride today, I noticed that gas was around $3.75 for regular
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In our area gas goes for 4.299 / gallon for 87 octane. Costco is selling gas for $4.159
Some good observations but things are changing. The infrastructure will be improving rapidly with the Infrastructure bill allocating 7.5 billion to build out 500,000 chargers in the coming years. State proposals are due in September to begin the rollout. Many EV owners charge at their homes and the average commute in the US is 37 miles a day. Charging is still an issue for those with little access to ready charging capability in apartments. It costs about $7 to fully charge my EV at home overnight for a 225 mile range.
I don’t even charge every day. On the road, I charge to 80% for maximum fill up efficiency and it takes about 20 minutes at a fast charger-enough time to stretch my legs, use the potty and grab a quick bite. EV batteries can be recycled to recover lithium and costly metals via electrolysis or other means; there are a couple of profitable companies doing this now (check out Redwood Materials owned by a former Tesla employee). Compare this to fossil fuels going up in smoke and a lot of waste heat and depleting our oil supply which is needed for other purposes-drugs, fertilizer, plastics, etc. EVs are 75% efficient in delivering energy to the wheels as compared to ICE cars at 25%.
Batteries are drastically coming down in price and there is a ton of research going on to improve them in terms of price and charging time and energy efficiency.
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Gas prices have plummeted here. We were surprised when we went for photography that has prices in the neighboring state are $4.19 a gallon as we are paying $3.50 in our state.
We were paying $4.19 here just a couple weeks ago. Even the Costco was above $4 as was the ultra cheap town my wife fills her tank. I’m really surprised we’re not over $5 a gallon but it’s probably the switch to summer fuel. A fill up below $70 is amazing
Today, (4/15/2022) national average is $4.073 and diesel is $5.011
in Idaho:
Regular: $4.396
Diesel : $5.163
Sounds a lot like Politics to me… I thought that was forbidden.
Can I say that the Infrastructure Bill is one of the causes of inflation. Oh My!
The use of EVs, an EV support infrastructure and inflation are all elements of what we must deal with in coping with the challenges of everyday human life.
What we typically think of as “politics” is simply the observable products of the competition among people fighting for positions of power and profit in whatever presents itself. Some of them are in it for personal motives and some are in it for the good of all and some are a blend of the two.
All of this raises strong feelings and emotions in us humans. But in the end Mother Nature and the laws of physics really don’t care about human feelings. It’s just not part of the equation.
We all should pay attention to those facts because what we are doing, not what we are feeling, has become part of where our blue planet is headed, and it isn’t looking to be as rosey as the past 1,000 years or so has been.
Today, 23 December 2022, I paid $2.39/gallon for 87 octane gas at a local Citgo station. I drive a lot less now that I am retired and don’t commute 100+ miles per day. The high gas prices never really affected us but it is nice to have the lower prices.
We are not being affected by gas prices. In Houston gas is under $3. We drive old, paid-off 4-cylinder cars (one is a hybrid), we mostly work remotely from home, and we don’t drive much.
We do little driving. Our home is close to all of our major destinations, so the interval being topping off the tank is usually measured in months, not days or weeks. We have 2014 Outback that just past 25k miles.
So Gas prices just aren’t an issue, but food prices are alarming and seem to show no signs of relief. $4 for a dozen eggs kinda curdles my yolks. The mantra has been that the high price of gas and diesel have had a huge negative impact on the price of food, and that’s probably true. But, the bump in food prices and fuel prices sorta worked in sync with each other on the way up. Fuel has come way down, the food prices… not so much. I’m not prepared to go on a gouging rampage, but it will become tempting at some point in time.
The issue is not gas prices but fuel (diesel). Everything people need moves by diesel. Nothing they need moves by gas. Until diesel prices go down there is no relief from anything.
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We don’t have electric freight rail, do we?
Since Feb '22 we’ve made two 1200-mile trips and one 900-mile trip, a total of 3300 miles in our ICE car for a cost of approx. $625 for gasoline.
Closer to home we’ve driven 4300 miles in our BEV since Feb '22 for a cost of $210 in electricity.
OH YOU of little price…
$5.04 to $5.79 for rgular at regular stations. Costco is probably $4.65 or $4.85 but there is not a recent pricing on Gas Buddy and I can’t remember what I paid today.
I do see over on Oahu that there is some gas at Costco at $4.79.
The things I do are:
- Limit trips
- Fill up at Costco
- Use a cash back card (Like the Costco card)