If Gasoline Hits 10 USD a Gallon
 

I'm kind of curious what all of you would think if gasoline were to hit $10/gal. Basically, would you be happy, sad, or indifferent?

The economy would collapse, which would make me sad to see people suffer more than they are already suffering. I go into a business and see few customers. Understanding the overhead, salaries, and the fact that business owners have virtually no safety net, it makes me very sad.
WE would be OK since we have retirement. It would hurt but we can adjust.
regards
Mech

The prices in Europe are essentially this high now; and have been for a while. They survive, and they get much more fuel efficient cars.

If oil gets a lot more expensive, that means that shipping everything from countries where they can make it cheap will be curtailed; eventually this will bring more jobs back home.

We might have to go back to better ways of doing things, it would be sad, we might also get better vehicles, but that would take a few years.

I'll have reason to buy another bike, at $10 a gallon it might finally pay and I won't have to lie to my wife.

Part of what prompted my asking this is that I work in a large office building (easily > 1,000 employees) and a VERY large parking lot is filled with cars every day. It got to the point where they had to start doing valet parking for anyone who showed up after 8 am. In addition, there are only four van pools (~ 28 people) for the entire building, and they are usually used only by employees who live more than 50 miles away.

Personally, I think people would adapt (they'd have to), but Old Mech's right... it might hurt.

I wouldn't change anything if gas hit $10, just like I wouldn't change anything if gas dropped down to $1 per gallon, only thing that I could see changing would be that we might start charging for mileage at work for over 50 miles.

At this very moment I would be mad. I deliver pizzas and I'm almost certain my gas reimbursement wouldn't cover 10 dollar gas. In the future I.e. 1 year, I wouldnt mind.

In you situation I think I would get a Sprinter and get it filled with riders using Craigslist. Maybe 15 passengers to spread out the cost, especially if I was one of those who had a long drive to work.

For personal use I would buy a Leaf for my wife and I to use locally.

It would definitely hurt, home values in rural areas would collapse beyond where they are now. Used car values would collapse. Two of the most valuable family assets, as well as the cost of transportation. Truckers would be dumping their rigs as they were when diesel hit $4 a gallon here in 2008.

regards
Mech

Personally I could easily live with very high gas prices, but realistically they would be catastrophic for many people especially those who are barely getting by today. Crime would explode as desperate people rationalized that they would be better off in prison.

I'ts climbing up here. The 7-eleven at the entrance to my neighborhood was at $3.449 for regular yesterday. Premium was close to $3.80. This summer it looks like we may hit $4 a gallon for the first time, and I am sure the tourist industry is scared stiff or the consequences of $4+, much less $10 a gallon. It ($10 a gal) would mean almost $600 billion more money leaving the US every year. That's 6 trillion in bank funding of the economy gone every year. Compare that to the gross national product and you have the recipe for another great depression. Inflation would skyrocket as people raced to raise their prices to cover costs of shipping. The airline industry would collapse.

regards
Mech

I agree a sudden increase would be very bad for the economy and people. However, a gradual (but faster then current) rise over 1-3 years to ~$10 would be a good thing. Nothing is going to make people change unless it hits them in the wallet.

On the other hand, I think it would be a great start if we could remove all the subsidizing of oil that is going on here so we know the actual price (well closer to at least).

$10 a Gallon
 

Was sat in the local coffee shop's parking lot last weekend and watched a staggering number of full size, crew cab, 4x4 pick-up trucks parade along the drive thru each with only the driver in it.:confused:

Just out of curiousity, what percentage of those office jobs do you think could be done by telecommuting? 99%?

I'm just experimenting with it, and it's a very logical thing to do.
Bad that it's not official - yet?

Part of the problem is that if we do the job right and give people notice and have programs to suppot the change, the hauls of protest would get the project stoped before it ever had a chance to see the light of day.
Politicaly it might be easyer to progresively remove subsidies without notice so that the market/people could adjust.The responce to the howles of protest could be mutted by programs to support better energy efficiancy. Done right it could be done with minimum pain...

Well, at least the pay back time for any ecomod would be much shorter.;)

In my current office? Maybe 10%. For the rest, the workers are dealing with sensitive information and documents, so they can't work with them from home.

The vendors would never bring all those donuts and meals to my house!!!

Just like someone else said, they get by in europe and so could we, the problem is we're used to cheap gas and we abuse it. we should drive only when we have to and combine trips by taking multiple people to the store and work.

the biggest problem would be trucking. everything we buy gets here by trucks. if fuel prices go up, so does the price of the product. i dispatch semi trucks for all kinds of loads. auto parts, steel, food, furniture. etc. all of those items and more would go up in price so the demand would go down because people wouldn't be able to afford them. when that happens people lose jobs because of the low demand and there are even more unemployed/poor people. This will happen sooner than later so we all need to get ready

Or people would go back to shipping more items by train, since trains are by far the most efficient means of transporting goods. Heck, people might even start riding trains (yes, the slow ones) more often. I used to frequent Amtrak from Los Angeles to Sacramento quite often, and I can only think of one time (if I recall, sometime around Thanksgiving) when the train was more than 50% capacity. And even then, more cars could always have been added to meet demand.

I agree trains would be smart. The ad says close to 500 miles per ton per gallon of diesel. If our trains were electric with overhead wires, they would be about 2X better, and the regenerative braking would be substantial.

I like hydraulic hybrid trains.

regards
Mech

Haha!

Either way, converting over to full-electric from diesel-electric would be a good idea, but I'd be concerned with the cost of developing that infrastructure. The system would have to provide almost 5,000 amps of current to each engine. :eek:

No problemo :D.

I wonder how much energy it takes to shoot a 25 ton aircraft off a carrier deck in less than 2 seconds?

Current Diesel electrics use a giant stove on top of the engine to convert brake energy into waste heat, because they couldn't possible put it into any battery that quickly.

Carry an accumulator car behind the engine to store that same energy.

Now you can pulse and glide a train!

Using that same accumulator-drive system.

They use electric motors because no transmission would hold up, so they have the same issues with mileage as a Chevy volt.

regards
Mech

LOL I am listening to one of the coal trains passing by on it's way to the docks at Newport News. 168 coal cars pass by here every hour as they haul West Virginia to China, one train load at a time.

regards
Mech

I know Neil will probably have a stroke reading this but the most efficient train was actually a steam engine made just prior to WW2, measured in the btu per mile of the anthracite coal it used for power.

I read that somehwere on the internet so we all know it has to be true.

:rolleyes:

regards
Mech

As Neil said in the start of this thread European prices are much higher than the US and we survive.

Current cost in UK is about $9 USG but most of that is tax which pays mostly for things like the NHS etc. It means I would spend a lot on fuel if I drove as much as you guys in the colonies do but I don't have to pay for health insurance or treatments unless I choose to go private - Swings and roundabouts.

We get smaller, more fuel efficient cars for other reasons too - partly to do with tax which is based on CO2. Whether that is a good measure instead of FE or efficiency by some other grading I'm not convinced.

Americans also tend to have to travel farther. I could travel through two, three, maybe four countries in Europe for the distance it takes me to visit my parents (they are in the same state).

Don't the higher European gas prices also result from fewer subsidies than in the United States?

With electrified rail they could feed the line - no need for expensive hybrid technology in every train. I'm sure that nearby trains would be more than happy to soak up the power.

Don't have to develop anything, just buy it off the shelf from European train equipment manufacturers - something like 80% of European rail is electric.

Tax.

I personally wouldn't be either way about it. But I know many people that would personally suffer from it. Here in Kentucky most everything is rural and spread out. It's not unusual to have a 30-60 mile commute to get a decent job.

The gas/diesel is about $9.50 a US gallon (14.60 NOK/L) where I live. Both fuels are heavily taxed, gasoline a little more than diesel.

Develop or purchase, sure. But you would still need to implement those changes, which would be a massive undertaking. Purchasing thousands of engines and replacing possibly hundreds of thousands of miles of rail (the U.S rail system runs on a different standard than European rails) is expensive and difficult. It would be easier to actually augment our current technology.

We can not change trains, and that is why they are all coal-fired steam locomotives to this day.

Yes, the fuel is heavily taxed in here too. And also every car you own & use must pay annual taxes depending on weight or CO2. But I'm glad about the healthcare & schools & such which we get "for return"
I used to think that it's everyone else's kids that get seriously sick, but the reality taught me a lesson. Anyhow, thanks for the healthcare we are doing quite ok.

I'm glad that a bicycle is still free of taxes. :o:rolleyes:

While some say my 6 mile drive to work makes me the perfect candidate for an electric car, even at 10$ a gallon it would still not be economical for me to buy an electric vehicle.

At 10$ a gallon a new gas Nissan Versa would cost me $931 more per year in fuel costs than a new electric Nissan Leaf. But the Leaf costs $24k more than a Versa. So the electric Leaf does not save me money unless I own if for longer than 26 years. And that's even with gas at $10/gallon!

But I still hyper-mile just because I'm cheap.

last i checked nobody liked paying more for anything than they have to for no reason.

higher fuel prices effect us all even if we dont think so directly.

if it cost farmers more money to run the machines that make inexpensive food then food prices go up. same for interstate trucking.

fares will go up on those bus and train tickets that everybody loves so much.

your electric bills will go higher also as it will cost more for the oil and coal fired power plants to do business.

taxes will have to go up because of the additional cost for the state to do business.

people in europe say oh we've had high prices forever and we deal with it. that may be so but european citys were designed around the idea that people walked because most of them have been around since WAY before cars and even trains. most of america on the other hand only exists because of trains and cars.

if you want to use as little gas a possable to "do your part" thats awesome and i thank you for it but saying oh i wish gas prices were 3 to 4 times what they are now so that it changes the behavior of other people is like saying i wish food prices were 3 or 4 times what they are now because i think those other people are fat.

higher gas prices will benefit you in no way. all it will do is divert money that you could have spent on other things into your gas tank and into the gas tanks of those whos services you use.

if you think it will help the enviroment you're still wrong because then it becomes "cheaper" to burn coal and wood. governments would most likely have to ease up on emissions standards for better mileage new vehicles. people will have to continue driving older vehicles that pollute more because they can no longer afford the new car payment. more people will have to make decisions of buy new tires/put brakes on the car/or put fuel in the tank and hopefully they'll have more money next month

hire fuel prices will only hurt everybodys cause

Yep - I take in healthcare but I pay in taxes. It all works out.

...looks almost like a stale stalemate!