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Automotive News & Views Are gas prices fueling your pain? 
10042 messages, Last post on Jul 12, 2008 at 3:07 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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We had a meeting the other day at work. People were talking about car pooling. Only problem, everyone lives just 1-5 miles away and they are scattered around town. The logistics would be a nightmare for many. Everyone also has a busy schedule and errands after work. In the summer people are often on different work schedules. I use about 15 gallons a month of petrol. Gasoline is worth at least $8 a gallon to me for the convenience it provides. If gasoline was to go higher I would look at getting a car with better MPG. I'm not saying I would buy another car, I would just look. My last fill netted 18.5 mpg (all in town driving). Cheap transportation if you ask me. It is hard to justify spending $100, $200 or $300 a month in car payments to save $20 or $30 a month in petrol. The people that will get burned as prices rise to $4 a gallon are the long commuters and low income folks that have a larger/older gas guzzler. Gasoline just went up 22 cents in two days. It didn't bother me one bit. To put it in perspective, my gasoline bill per month has gone from $20 a month ten years ago to $50 now. My cell phone bill, on the other hand, went from zero (didn't have one back then) to $100 a month (for the family). I think we have a few other people that post on the board that are in the same position. Gasoline is going to need to get a lot higher before it impacts us in a meaningful way. And yes, I have thought about getting rid of my gas guzzler to save the world. Only problem with that is someone else will buy the car and drive it. The car is in good shape and should last another 10 years. Also, what will be the best kind of vehicle/engine to have in the future. Will it be diesel, hybrid, hybrid diesel, hydrogen, air, electric, eco boost, fuel cells or something else. 
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Replying to: lemko (Apr 16, 2008 12:18 pm) I'm lucky that all the cars in my "fleet" take regular. That said, I most recently paid $3.79 (on Sunday), and the nearest station to my house is up to $3.91 now, up 5 cents as of Monday last. So absurd is all relative... Remember when a few years back everyone was predicting that the economy as we know it would just grind to a complete halt if oil ever exceeded $100/barrel? That includes some posters right here at Edmunds, IIRC, and at the time $100 was considered some ridiculous, fantastical figure that would'nt be reached for decades. Oil closed just high of $115 today, up a couple of bucks just since the beginning of this week. The worst this year is yet to come, but I wonder if any of the so-called experts out there can really predict anything meaningful about oil and gas prices and availability in the future...
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Apr 16, 2008 6:58 pm) Yep, doesn't phase me a bit. My neighbor just bought a new Mastercraft skiboat and looking at it all shinny and new makes me want to get my boat out of storage to clean up, fill up, and hit the lake. If some think $4 gas will keep people who can afford $60k boats off the lake, they are flat wrong, I have no doubt the lake we boat on will be just as crowded this year as last. Our current boat is going on 5 years old and my wife and I have been talking about its replacement. I plan on boating for many more years.
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Replying to: larsb (Apr 16, 2008 9:04 am) Maybe to you it is insignificant. Not to those that went through the ordeal. Just because every time you have ridden mass transit it was a wonderful experience does not make it so for everyone. There are sections of the trolley line in San Diego that are very scary with not much protection from the criminal element that use the transit system to carry out their acts of crime. To clarify my post. I did not say we should do away with cities or the mass transit that keeps the people moving. I said very clearly, so that anyone could understand, that I would not live under those conditions under any circumstances. As Kernick has posted many times if you cannot afford to live the way you like, work harder or get a better education. Accepting that you are stuck in some cesspool of a city riding some stinking mass transit is a personal choice. I just posted one small incident of the failure of mass transit. I am not advocating anything except that it be self supporting. Why should I subsidize someone else getting to work?
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Replying to: dieselone (Apr 16, 2008 7:27 pm) That is just part of the AMERICAN DREAM. Take away the dream and all you have is a country of android losers. Why work hard if I cannot enjoy the fruits of my labor. In 1983-86 when I owned a 22 foot Nordic jet boat with a 454 Chevy engine, gas was a bigger part of my income than it is now. Using 60 gallons in a day of racing around lake Havasu was not uncommon. Can't say as I miss those days but they were fun at the time and a good escape from 3 weeks in the Arctic tundra producing oil for the rest of the folks.
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Replying to: nippononly (Apr 16, 2008 7:25 pm)
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 16, 2008 7:42 pm) Those big block jet boats are very cool. While my family enjoys powerboating, I could see my wife and I slowing down to a nice 30-40' sloop and become a blow boater when the kids are long gone.
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Replying to: dieselone (Apr 16, 2008 8:20 pm) |
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 16, 2008 7:49 pm) With the summer driving season now all but upon us, I have no hope that any temporary dip in oil prices now would reduce gas prices at all. What it might do, I guess, is stop them rising just before they go past the $4/gallon mark. Good ol' McCain, of course, has proposed something previously discussed here in the sacred pages of TownHall: suspending the federal gas tax to give people a whopping $0.18 of relief between Memorial Day and Labor Day. To him I say, how about getting in your time machine, travellling back 20 years, and developing a solid national energy policy?? It would be doing a hell of a lot more good now than giving us those $0.18 for a couple of months this summer. But I am sure some, if not many, people will say something is better than nothing.
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Replying to: nippononly (Apr 16, 2008 10:52 pm) How 'bout saying that to Pelosi and the Democrat congress who said last April that she (they) have a plan to handle rising gas prices...? I heard an early talk show guest saying that the problem with the prices is the dollar has slid in value. That's a government economics problem. If it were where it started the cost of oil would be 60$ per barrel. He pointed out refineries are at 83% capacity so the Petroleum Institute can't use that in their press releases to justify higher gas prices. It will be the need for silly EPA boutique gas blends that causes the rise now; couldn't the EPA have one blend for all areas that need special treatment? I'm driving less to save the $4 gallon.
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