The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (PUBLIC) The Pub Who is your choice for US President?

"None of the above" was not a choice?

Well, gas in Texas isn't pleasant atm either

Since I drive a Volvo, I have to use premium gas. It's
checking in at $3.48 / gallon as I type this. . . . Diesel
is checking in at $3.85.

28-30 miles per gallon. ~80 mile round trip drive to work
daily. One fill up a week running about ~$48.00 each.
That's just shy of $200 / month just for the privilege of
driving to and from work. I like to think of it as a tax
for those who don't live within walking distance of their
jobs. . . . then again, if I lived within walking distance
the costs would likely be that much higher anyway. So
whatever money I saved on gas would go to higher taxes or
rent for that prestigious "in-town" condo or home.

While we won't see the point where folks quit driving to
work, they will make sacrifices in other areas that will
hurt the economy as well. Since gas is an absolute must
have, folks will cut down spending elsewhere.

Entertainment, trips, eating out, etc. etc.

This, in turn, will simply add fuel to the fire when the
consumer spending numbers come out and the decline causes
the market to bleed some more.

Somewhat of a snowball effect if you will.

http://money.aol.com/news/story/_a/whos-getting-rich-as-gas-prices-soar/20080313172309990001

News story about gas prices and cost of production and who makes money on it.

The only way to stop it is if the US citizens somehow make the oil companies loose money which is very hard because everything we use has some type of oil in it plastics (bottles,shoes,anything that has to do with plastics has some type of oil). Also rubber uses alot of crude think about how much of that we use. So until we can come up with something to minimize the use of other products including gas we are screwed (just turn the bat sideways and stick it u know where).

Better hope for ethanol(e85) or hydrogen cars to push real heavy then only will oil companies have competitors other then themselves.

the us wont make oil companies lose money, seeing as they have the rest of the world to supply as well, the states thinks it is the center all the time for oil prices to come down it would need to be a massive government move in multiple countries to expose this quazi monopoly that they all have going with each other and make them start competing again, here in edmonon there is a "oil shortage" but seeing as we have about 30 refineries within 20 minutes of each other, on top of the oilsands in fort mcmurray and under an hour away another 15 refineries I cant see this being a legitamite claim, but every single last station upped its prices by nearly 15 cents a liter over night... kind of strange how every single company raised the prices even with though it was only esso that had the so called problem at one of the refineries here in sherwood park

Arcain i dont want to hear about oil refrineries just look up southeast texas. The gulf coast produces if im not mistaken something like 70% of the US oil right now they are building the 2nd largest plant in the world. Id say within 2 hours of each other there are about 90-100 plants just where i live about 50 if not more because i dont know what they got in Houston. Just in my area the golden triangle there are about 25-30 easy if u include water treatment plants prolly alot more. Yes my area is like 4th on the terror list from all the plants in this area.

Even the alternate gas things like where they turn the corn into gas for cars, most cars will need to be adapted to that and it will be a lot of money out of our pocket. Before I went back to school and took this class, if most farmers start to sell off their corn or whatever to make the biofuels it's going to effect the land that the farmers grow their crop on. Ya I guess I am kinda of what you guys been calling an eco freak, since that is my major in college, but if there was a lot of farmers who harvested their corn for the bio fuel they remove the entire crop. Typically farmers who just use it for regular harvesting they leave behind the stuff that cannot be harvested and it reabsorbs into the soil and will still have a good output of crops for next harvesting season. If farmers used that corn for bio fuel they will not have the harvested leftovers going back into the soil which would eventually make the soil go bad and the area will not yield anymore crop. In doing so that would put our corn and other food prices going through the roof.
I would love to see some sort of alternate fuel system.

I am curious if anyone here has a hybrid vehicle? I would love to get one myself just for the gas costs alone although the lesser threat for the environment is a good factor as well. But in reality it's all about the money.
I wondered for those who have hybrid cars is it really that much of a savings.

A professor of mine was actually calculating the "savings" of a hybrid the other day during a tangent he took in class. It ends up costing you about the same as a regular car. Sure, over the course of five years or so (if you drive an extremely high amount of miles per year) you'd end up saving a couple thousand dollars, but the thing is the battery needs to be replaced every five years or so, and costs just about as much as the money you'd save on gas. If you want to save the environment, go ahead and get a hybrid. If you want to save money, don't bother.

I vote hydrogen, thing is though then you'd be spending more money on electricity if you have one of the hydrogen stations you plug into your wall at home. Or you'd probably be spending a fuckton buying hydrogen at a station (which only exist in SoCal at the moment.)

Either one of those solutions would take the gleam off the spear that oil holds steady fast to our bellies. At least wedge it out a good ways.

We should start investing into compressed air vehicles, cars that run on highly compressed tubes of carbon. Or Could go with metallic nuclear reactive propulsion in vehicles by using say maybe aluminum isotopes which can be harvested in space then brought down to earth to be refined and placed at like maybe Best Buy, they would probably last longer then an electric cars battery, but we would need layers of radioactive suits while we drive,lol and figure out how to fly all the way past mars without taking forever to get back...hum could use robots... Or a mixture of these car models. Say maybe a steam vehicle, one that uses an electrical battery similar to the electric cars battery that's only purpose is to raise the temperature of a small central heated core to really hot temperature and then we could insert solidified carbon dioxide to cool the core and as the steam pumps out it could motorize the car. Instead of having to replace the battery say every 5 years it would be every 15 or 20. In any case we should be doing something instead of trying to figure out where to get oil next cuz the oil thing is just not working and an entire nation is being pulled into awkward positions by the belly button, just need to find some lobbying shoes and the right pairs of ears.

The wife and I own a Toyota Hybrid Highlander and we average 28mpg. Hybrids are best for those who do a lot of in town driving and accelerate slowly away from lights and stop signs so that the electric motor is the primary source for as long as possible. The gas motor kicks in around 25 or so and then depending on how much the battery is charged and the current driving conditions the electric motor will supplement the gas motor. We have the full size V6 gas engine with 230HP so all in all I think the 28mpg is decent. Note also that we live 22 miles out of town so the majority of our driving is done at speeds between 45 and 60 mph which is not optimum for a hybrid.