"High gas price amnesia" is setting in again
 

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1414775158

Image: A Siegel

Fuel prices are dropping, following oil prices down. They're near 4 year lows lately.

I read a good phrase recently describing car buyers who have "high gas price amnesia". (It's about the U.S., though it probably applies to many other countries as well.) When fuel prices drop, they buy a lot fewer efficient cars and head for thirstier crossovers, SUV's and pickups, without thinking of what's happened in the past and is likely to happen again:

The comment was made in an article specifically about hybrids, because sales are off ~5% while overall auto sales are increasing.

Of course, right now we're seeing the same trend here in the forum: Overall activity (post/threads and visitors/searchers) tracks oil prices very closely, so it's no surprise there's less activity now than there was a few months ago.

Yep, I saw $2.99 for regular this morning. I should go buy a truck! (Oh, wait I already have one :) )

My last tank fill on Monday 11/27 was @ 2.899. It's wonderful and still too high all at the same time. I'll be really thrilled if it ever gets below $2 and stays. That actually makes a difference in the pocketbook. an I remember 6 months ago, it was 3.899 here in WI IIRC.:)

Whereas instead of going about three weeks on $20 worth, I can now stretch it to a full month.

I don't care if gas prices fall below two bucks a gallon, I still want to conserve as much gas as possible!
If my hypermiling in the Insight cancels out the effects of just one gap toothed git-er-done in his big dumb F250 dually with his inbred kids and pitbull hanging off the side rails in the back, glaring at me as they roll coal around me . . . . . then maybe there will be some gas left when my grand kids start to drive.

Yeah, getting MPG has become a more ingrained hobby for me. It's been 9 years since I started the hobby, and although I haven't had the bug to pursue many mods or take up more drastic hypermiling techniques, I am still irked when someone else is in the captain's chair of my Echo or it rains, or a school bus stops off in front of me, etc. If I had the hot rod I plan to start next year, I may not care about that, but otherwise, I have some sort of strange internal drive to strain for good numbers on that MPG record. 40+ is pretty good for me, more is impressive (I do miss the salad days of the mid-40s I was getting) but I am satisfied. Under 7 cents/g at current prices means I'd make decent profits were I sent anywhere and paid for mileage.

My grandkids will be driving electric vehicles.
 

And when needed, will use synthetic hydrocarbon fuels.

8 days, 20 bucks, 274.6 miles, $2.709 agallon. A little over 7 cents a mile in a $300 car.

If that is not cheap enough I can ride the bike for half that.

I remember 12.9 cents a gallon from over 50 years ago.

regards
mech

day by day I see the gas prices dropping 2-5 cents here in sacramento. It's a good thing but in the back of my mind it makes me think that it's not going to take a lot longer to pay off the money I have put into my car in gas savings

Thanks to the high taxes we pay here a litre of Diesel has tumbled from a heady £1.29 to a (gasp) £1.22.

To get to US prices per gallon multiply that by 3.96 (litres to wimpy US Gallons - and yes the spelling is Litres and not Liters because Litres is French - deal with it) and then multiply by 1.60 (GBP to USD).

And yes we pay 40% tax on top of that, but we have an NHS :D

just paid 2.64 at the place I paid 2.69 2 weeks ago!

Fuel prices are "cheap" at the moment here too.

I paid AU$1.419 per litre this week, that's A$4.73 per gallon, down from $5.28 per gallon not long ago.

I've been seriously looking at more economical (used) cars lately, although it's hard to justify spending money in the hope of maybe saving money.

I last filled up on the fifteenth and I have gone a little over four hundred miles, with a quarter of a tank left. I have a fifty-cent discount through my supermarket, which is currently charging $2.799. I do not want to blow it and only get seven gallons. If I wait until I need ten gallons, I save five dollars!

So excited over $5...

The nearest Costco is charging $2.599. I do not have any idea how I spent $500 in one month at the supermarket, especially considering that I was out-of-town for a little over a week, purchasing food for my brother and myself from a competitor.

I kind of want to fill up at Costco and save the big discount for the end of next month, but I figure that it really does not matter.

I guess I have fallen to this? Idk, I just don't drive the insight right now because the Mustang has more room, even though I'm only getting 7-9mpg right now for some reason. I cruise at 52-55mph and the EPA highway is 23mpg. Most of my starts are cold starts, but I just don't see how I'm getting so low. Oh well!

I think my last tank was 2.49 a gallon. :thumbup:

Gonna park the insight and go drive the kick for a while. :turtle:

Saw gas for 3.15 a gallon. An entire dollar less per gallon than what I payed 3 months ago. Then again I would never run that watered down crap through my engine, but still (Arco).

I've been saying in my group of friends that gas prices are going to go back up so we might as well use the cheap gas to test mods.
I spend something like $.30 a mile for everything, that assumes my car will never roll another mile too.

Doesn't make sense to waste money when you can use the opportunity to save.

I still drive like a Scrooge.

You know you're a hypermiler when you're hoping you'll need gas while the prices are low. :D

The problem is it takes six or ten of you to make up for one of him. :(

Arragonis -- Aren't the Capitalists gobbling up the NHS, even as we speak?
______

No comment yet on why gas prices are going down? Is it because nobody has a job? That would mean, here at the begining of the age of robot burger-flippers, that the price will likely continue to decline.

/burn it if ya got it

I once put $20 of diesel in the truck just to get home, and it wasn't even enough to turn the low fuel light off. This was back in 2008, when diesel was $5/gallon. It's a sad day when $20 isn't enough to extinguish the fuel light.

I assure you that driving and burning gasoline doesn't cancel out the effects of someone else driving and burning gasoline.

Any fuel you "save" will only increase supply, thus forcing prices lower, and consumption by other people up.

Without a worldwide conservation plan, individual conservation is next to pointless for the environment. However, it's extremely relevant to the conservationists pocketbook.

Save up the discounts until you reach the maximum, and then bring gas cans along with an empty fuel tank. Get the maximum amount of fuel at the discount that you can.

If you don't have fuel cans, just get a couple buddies to go to the station with you and fill their vehicles until the maximum limit is reached.

Until then, fill up on Costco. They recently became Top Tier certified (same as Shell, Chevron, Texico, etc), for whatever that's worth.

Did they really? Because I refuse to put anything in my vehicles except for chevron, shell and 76. The Mustang will barely run on 87 Arco, it pings like crazy. Then again it doesn't like 87 Chevron either, but it doesn't ping like it does on Arco.

Agree to disagree!

By being an example to everybody around us, we individuals can definitely make a difference. It's not just about saving a couple of bucks (although I'm not complaining:thumbup:), it's also about waking people up to what's coming!
If my actions can affect a couple of people around me (and I have already changed several people's outlooks), I am making a difference.

Yeah, it's a small one, but it's still a difference!

I disagree to agree, whatever that means. A friend mentioned trying to date some guy that always argued with her. I asked "Why don't you ever argue with me?!" I keep trying to start arguments, but I do not expect them to go anywhere... :)

Fry's discounts only add up until the end of the month, so I already started over. I should be able to find someone to go with me to get gas.

It's a quote from Anchorman, lol!

Hey, no bad-mouthing pit bulls!

Sorry man, didn't mean to bad mouth the things, they just seem to always be in very close proximity to rednecks, so I wouldn't feel right not including them

The point of testing mods while gas is cheap is that it allows you to invest a gallon of gasoline and (for me) a 10% FE gain would translate into about a 20-25 gallon a year return on investment.

That's not a bad idea. History shows you pay through the nose for efficient used cars when fuel prices are high.

These low gas prices won't last. The cost of finding new dinosaur oil is about $100 per barrel, and rising 12% per year.

The big oil companies announced that they are reducing exploration spending over the next few years. Google oil firms cutting exploration spending for some articles on the subject.

I'm predicting that the average gas price in the U.S. will be about $5.00 per gallon for regular by 2018.

One thing I keep reading is the the current decline in prices is "different this time". More structural rather than cyclical.

EG: the second last time we had a big spike in prices ('08), the U.S. was not awash in oil from North Dakota as it is now.

Although sources like those and Canada's oil sands are really only economical to produce when prices are high, so...

In Saudi Arabia a barrel of oil costs $2 to extract, but they need to sell it for $80 to pay for their govt programs (a few years back). With the US and Canada becoming more productive the recent price drop maybe more long term, but then it's still 50% higher than 6 years ago. Anyone get a 50% wage increase over the last 6 years?

regards
mech

I don't have a computer, and my mobile with this website is terrible- so posts, my new build on my Mustang and Insight s along with about 8 tanks will go unseen for a while.

Yeah, the oil game is an interesting one to watch. Much like the stock market you got people betting against it going down and against it going up further driving up prices. That in turn drives up the entry fee for even new investors who want to take part in the action.

You got people who need to buy gas, so demand will always be there.

Then you got those who will do anything to make a buck and will undersell the other guy. Thats good for a while til the big guys either under cut you using what they have in savings to stay afloat or just buy you out.

We are likely in the last situation and its just a matter of time before they are bought out and prices return.

New oil from old wells may cost that little to extract, but new exploration requires oil in the $85-100 per barrel range.

Same problem with US oil.

There's is a limit to how low you can go before you disincentivize exploration for new oil. We're somewhere around that point right now.

Oh, no... go ahead and test. Testing is worth it, especially if the results are shared! I was merely stating that I don't see the point in wasting fuel on your daily grind unnecessarily.

Oil shale and tar sands are energy negative boodogles that will run their course in short order. As the fracking and constant warfare drag the economy down, demand will slump.

Until the deep, hot abiotic sources of all the oil replenish the fields of wells.

We should just be patient.

Yeah, just wait around for a few hundred million years, and everything will be fine :-)

I miss the 'All over but the sweating...' thread. :(

Maybe its time to replace the pacifica then... that thing is a thirsty little v6!

If gas prices are temporarily dropping, is the asking price of economical cars also going down?