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Gas Prices Jump; California Hardest Hit
New submitter jefery23 writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press article (as carried by the Denver Post): "Californians woke up to a shock Friday as overnight gasoline prices jumped by as much as 20 cents a gallon in some areas, ending a week of soaring costs that saw some stations close and others charge record prices." Friday's jump followed another big one just a day earlier, too. Texas gas prices have gone up, but not quite so dramatically ($3.59 at the station nearest to me); how are they in your neck of the woods? Those Bloom boxes and charging stations can't arrive too soon.
An improving economy demands more gasoline.
Since supplies are already so tight that we are increasingly using extreme sources of oil like very deep sea drilling and oil sands, we should expect to pay more for gasoline.
I hope you've all been buying fuel efficient cars...
It is beyond me how americans can complain about gas prices. In Sweden people pay more than twice as much, and everyone seems to be fine with it. On top of that, americans have even more money to spend than do swedes. So, are americans cheap, or just spoiled?
On this side of the pond, we're paying a bit under $8/gallon...
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism. We have no spare refinery capacity, and we have fewer gas stations per-capita than most states, and few new stations are being built.
I don't expect things to get any better. Pro-business people are leaving the state, shifting us even further to the left, and the car-culture is thriving. My son's elementary school has 800 students, and despite perfect weather almost every day, exactly two (2) of them bike to school: my son and a kindergarten girl from our neighborhood. Every morning we pedal past a long line of moms in idling SUVs waiting to drop of their kid.
Wednesday morning, I noticed some gas stations near me (silicon valley, ca) had raised their prices by $0.40 or more since the previous day. By Thursday, all the local gas stations had caught up. That is approximately a 9% jump. If prices went up again yesterday (which I haven't noticed...) then the overall increase this past week is more like 15%.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
What's special about CA that made them have a higher increase than the rest of us?
California has different gasoline formulation standards than the rest of the country, so gasoline cannot be brought in from other states. At this time of year, they are switching from the state-mandated "summer formulation" to "winter formulation", so inventories are low. Then, there was a refinery fire in August, which shut down some of the state's gasoline production. Combine those factors and you have all the necessary conditions for shortages.
A local refinery lost power and shut down for a while.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Washington State Electrical Power (2011) (PDF)
73% Hydroelectric
14% Coal
8% Natural Gas
3% Nuclear
1.12% Wind
0.49% Biomass
0.37% Waste
0.08% Petroleum
0.05% Landfill gasses
0.02% Geothermal
0.03% Other
When you have to lie to make a point, you should realize that your point is not worth making.
=Smidge=
can't believe you pay what, $3.60 per gallon. jesus we had such prices 20 years ago. Calculating from litres to gallons,and from USD to EUR, they charge $8.64 a gallon here, in germany. everyone excluding me stop complaining;)
Learn to take the bus.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Wow. You manage to bring in one thing to explain this thing and get it spectacularly wrong. As someone else pointed out, the Columbus Day weekend is the traditional ramp down time for refineries in the U.S. as they rejigger their formulation for fall (You didn't know refineries changed formulas for the season?). Also, several major supply routes got messed up:
From California gasoline prices soar amid refinery and pipeline shutdowns By The Associated Press:
As for Krugman and this being all the fault of QEx: there's a reason gas is not part of the core measure of inflation. Last I checked, we aren't in an inflation cycle yet. Gas is a volatile price (no-pun intended) that jumps way up and down responding to things like, you know, refineries having fires and pipeline shut downs. It's left out of most inflation conversations among economists.
Anyway, thanks for playing! Here's a home version of the game "The Eeeevil Fed Is Coming For Your Savings!!"
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The US dollar is actually a little higher from this time last year.http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy
Other countries tend to have higher gas prices than the USA because of taxes levied to support various social programs. Our high prices go to fill corporate coffers.
We hear that all the time, about how high European prices are.
However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.
In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.
So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].
[1]: It cracks me up when people call themselves Christian, and then talk about Ayn Rand's philosophy. They are mutually exclusive, and anyone who doesn't see this either hasn't read the Bible or Atlas Shrugged, or is just plain ignorant.
That's not really it. It depends on where your generating capacity is coming from. If it's coming from coal plants, you shouldn't buy an electric car—gas is cleaner. If it's coming from wind, you should definitely buy an electric car if it makes economic sense to you personally.
Actually, You're missing the entire point of an electric car. People think you should get one because of environmental concerns. The reasons to get one are entirely economic, and the tipping point is almost here (if not already). Electric cars use far cheaper electricity for their operation. the EPA has an MPGe rating that gives a pretty good comparison of the *cost* of fuel. This means that for the cost of the electricity on average, you could use gas and get that same mileage for you money. There is a reason that Electric cars are rated in the high double digits or low triple digits. I own a Miev, and the cost of my daily commute is so low I haven't noticed the difference on my monthly utility bill. I drive about 30 miles a day 5 Days a week. The vehicle cost me $490 / month for 72 months. The cost of Electricity I have estimated to be about $23-$26 / month. Now comes the good part: Cost of electricity is really very stable, and does not increase very fast. That means that in 5 years when gas is $6 / gallon, and you are spending $250+ / month on gas, I will still be spending $25. Also, Gasoline engines are complex and easily damaged through mishandling and improper maintenance. A gas engine really only has a life expectancy of about 5,000 to 10,000 hours (200 to 400 k miles). Electric motors with MTBF of 50,000+ hours are not uncommon. That means that the motor in your electric car is likely to out-live you. The Motor controllers (if properly designed) have only one part with a low MTBF, and if properly designed, this $10 part should be swappable on the controller. My Miev has coolant, but it doesn't run hot, so there is little likelihood of normal operating resulting in damage to the cooling system. Regenerative braking significantly reduces the wear load on the brakes making them last for 3x or 4x longer. In all, my only real expense in the first 5 years will be tires... I expect that reduction in maintenance costs alone will save a further $40 / month. Now lets add it all up and figure out the ROI. First, We will use three use cases: the first 200,000 miles, 400,000 and 1,000,000. For 200,000 miles, the gas car uses 8,000 gallons of gas at an average of $5 per gallon (remember this has to include reasonable price increases over the next 14 years). That comes to $40,000 for gas. The cost of the vehicle is about $20,000. The cost of maintenance is about $5,500. (oil changes brakes and tires. Total cost is $65,500 for 14 years and the car is basically on its last legs. Many parts on the verge of failure, unreliable. Now take the electric: Base cost $35,000. Cost of fuel is $4,000 ($25 per month for 168 months). Maintenance costs $1,750. Total cost is $40,750, and the car is mostly in running order with one caveat: It needs a new battery. Todays cost: $10,000 (eight years from now this cost is expected to be half what it is today. Total cost for 14 years: $50,750. The electric has a clear advantage.
Now for the 400k miles scenario:
for the second 200,000 miles, the gas vehicle costs an additional $56,000 in gas (gas went up to $7 average for the period, an increase of 28% over 14 years (2% inflation). Costs of maintenance have soared as all the moving parts have worn out and needed to be replaced. $7,300. Total cost for the second 14 years: $64,300. The electric costs have gone up also. Electricity now costs $35 / month (2% across 14 years), so the cost comes to $5,900. Cost of maintenance includes another battery replacement for an additional $10,000 plus the regular $1,800. Lets add in an additional $4000 X-factor just to cover incidentals, like maybe we fried a motor controller, or some other unexpected weakness in this particular cars design. Total: $21,700.
So afte
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
We hear that all the time, about how high European prices are.
However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.
In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.
So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].
You live in the wrong city - why would you continue to live in a city where you are constantly in fear of your life and the local police won't help you?
There are lots of nice cities and towns throughout the USA where you can live relatively close to work (or near a usable transit system) without being afraid of getting shot in the head when you go to work.
Some cities that come to mind include San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, Santa Cruz.
You may have to adjust your standard of living - instead of a large suburban house, you may be in a small city apartment (which you can do even with kids, you may not have a yard, but will have a park + large playground a short walk away), but that's a tradeoff that millions of people are happy to make.
If you want to save gas, but think a motorcycle is too dangerous, look into a small hybrid car Back when i commuted on an FJ1200, my gas milage was in the low 30's (a new FJR1300 is rated at 39mpg). A Prius will give you over 40mpg. If you don't want a hybrid, a Volkswagon TDI diesel will also give you over 40mpg. Or if you want a more conventional gas powered car, look at Honda Fit (mpg in the 30's), or Mazda3 skyactive (up to 40mpg highway).
I have a 12 mile bike commute, which is close to the upper bound of how far many people are willing to bike (an hour each way is a little farther than many people are wiling to ride), but it lets me live affordably close to SF without paying exhorbitant apartment rates. I live within an easy walk to a train station, so I can choose between commuting by bike or by train. I have a car, but put around 6000 miles/year on it, mostly for out of town trips. I don't even drive to the grocery store since I live within a 2 minute walk to the store.
I'm not wealthy, I just chose where to live based on having a non-car commute.
The price of Gas is not reacting to a Supply vs Demand price rise. 2005 remains the peak of oil consumption in the U.S.
This is a nice thought, but it's the wrong question. The market doesn't consist solely of the US, you need to measure global supply and global demand.
Global demand has continued to go up.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If someone came up with a good in-road delivery system for electricity for cars, they could probably successfully pitch wiring all our roads for electricity
There are already good proposals for doing this that do not require wiring the roads. These proposals assume that in the future cars will be capable of driving in "platoons", separated by only a few inches to reduce drag and increase road capacity.
Option 1: inductive coupling. Cars contain coils in their bumpers that can transmit and receive energy from cars immediately in front or behind them. If you are on a long drive, the computer in your car negotiates with the computer in the other cars and buys power from them. If you are on a short commute, and have spare power, you sell the power to other cars as you drive and make a small profit.
Option 2: magnetic coupling. This is similar, but the bumpers contain electro-magnets that pull or push leading or trailing cars. So if you are on a long trip, you get on a freeway, join a platoon, automatically negotiate to buy power, and then coast to your destination without consuming any of your own battery power. You could even use your engine to recharge your battery as you siphon power from the rest of the platoon.
Both of these proposals assume that cars on short trips are more common than cars on long drives. That is mostly true. But on long stretches of highway it is possible that dedicated vehicles with big batteries (or CNG generators on board) will be used to convoy platoons of regular cars.
Record profits for oil companies while roads crumble is the America Way (trademarked, copyrighted, guaranteed Communist free, known to cause cancer in California, all rights reserved). Jesus loves profits, hates poor people and drives a big ass Hummer so he doesn't feel the potholes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Man up. What do you think coal, oil, natural gas etc power plants do now? Do you even remember the massive power outage that affected a large portion of the United States a few years ago? Enough solar energy hits the earth in an hour to fill all our electrical requirements for a year. The only problem would be getting that energy to where people need it. Stop your whining about how hard things are. People could setup individual panels at their homes to reduce load on the grid, and plants can be setup in various locations as well. If one location is cloudy, guess what? Another one probably isn't!
Guess what? That means you need to build twice as many panels/wind generators as you nominally need (at least). That increases the cost 2x, plus of course the cost of a robust power grid to transmit the power. Again, not quite so easy in a part of the world near tornado alley, where power loss is already moderately common... and where loosing power in the winter means people can start dying.
If everyone starts using electric cars, that represents a massive increase in demand. According to this [PDF WARNING] report, ~28% of US energy demand is in transportation, which means our demand for electrical power will go up significantly (30-40% is probably a decent estimation). If you double production costs and increase demand, combined with the vastly increased cost of electric cars (themselves hardly environmentally friendly to make. Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors) and suddenly you are looking at transport costs 2-3 times greater than they are now. Good luck getting that to happen, considering people already complain about the high costs of gas (which already has significant economical impact).
My point with hydroelectrical was it doesn't scale. If you try to make it scale, you run out of land for people to live and farm, and your entire cost of living goes up considerably. My entire point is that while green energy sounds nice, it is nowhere near practical yet, and won't be for years yet. Electric generation and storage is simply not good enough yet, and that is ignoring the fact that green power sources rarely are as green as they seem (like the Prius mentioned earlier: they always have environmental costs people don't like to talk about). Such as, for example, the fact that magnets used in electric motors requires rare earths, which have massive pollution by-products. I'm speaking realistically here when I say the only green technology we have, right now, that could fill our electric needs not only practically but cost-efficiently is nuclear.
Doesn't matter how much energy is hitting the planet from the sun, we simply cannot collect it effectively. Even an efficient solar panel is only 15% or so efficient. And expensive. And unreliable.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Except Europeans like their health care and don't seem to view sociopathy as a positive character trait.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not hard to actually dig up the data. You don't have to presume or guess anything.
Where would the power for 10,000 EVs come from? all sources. It's not as if they run Hydro at 100% until they max it out, then run up Coal until that's maxed out, etc... If anything, they run coal flat out all the time because that's the most economical way to operate it. Coal and other thermal cycle powerplants are slow to respond to changes, Hydro is not. So I'd actually posit that the lion's share of power for 10,000 EVs would be from untapped Hydro power.
Scraping Wikipedia, Washington State has over 27,000 MW of potential hydro power installed. Obviously not all of that will be usable year-round or necessarily all at once, but even if we cut that in half (say 13,000 MW) that's 113,880,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2011 they used 59,576,028 or 52% of that. 52% of half their installed capacity. There's plenty of headroom there.
To put that into perspective, 10,000 vehicles driving the national average of 15,000 mi/yr with a very conservative 3 mi/kWh would need an extra 50,000 MWh of electricity... a 0.05% increase over the 91,106,272 MWh they already use. Drop in the bucket. If everyone in the entire state bought an EV - even the ones who don't currently own or are even eligible to own a car - power consumption would rise about 37%. You're still well within the state's installed hydroelectric generating capacity.
So no, I don't think the coal plants will burn any hotter at all.
For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons along with selling power outside the state.
=Smidge=
The fact that 2005 was the peak of oil consumption in the US is irrelevant. Oil prices are set on the global market so what you need to consider is how much oil is being consumed globally and it has almost consistently been higher every year.
http://www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx
Well that's what happens when you let your politicians gouge the living hell out of you with taxes. We don't have any VAR taxes bleeding us dry either, but that doesn't mean we are just gonna sit back and let them start piling taxes on. Maybe its time that you in the EU made your own TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party and let the politicians know you're tired of their hands in your wallet?
You (and many others I'm sure) might find it instructive to actually find out what percentage of the average European's income goes to taxes, vs. what percentage of the average American's income does (hint: it's *much* closer than you think, and do keep in mind that most taxes Americans pay are both hidden and regressive). Then ponder the services Europeans get for giving up all that money, vs. the services Americans get (hint: not even close).
Unlike those socialist Europeans who get things like free medical care and university education, we in America can be smug about the fact most of *our* money goes to waste and lining the pockets of those who are already rich. After all, that's the beauty of a capitalist society, and hey, it'll be my turn to get rich soon, right? Right?
A currency crisis is causing bankruptcy. The welfare state is a useful target for those wishing to remove credit and market excesses from blame.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Maybe its time that you in the EU made your own TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party and let the politicians know you're tired of their hands in your wallet?"
Why? we get something for it.
Where I live the minimum wage is 2347$ for everybody of 18 years of age without any qualification, health benefits for everyone, guaranteed minimum income even if you can't/won't work, minimum pensions for everyone, survivor pensions for everyone allied to a person having worked at least 12 months, disability pensions if you get hurt or sick, a year and a half of unemployment benefits, months of vacation for mom and dad when a kid comes to the family, no matter which way, perfect roads, free schools, University costs a couple of hundred bucks a year and for 5 bucks you can use all the public transports for 24 hours throughout the country, 50 bucks for a month.
And doctors make housecalls for less than 10 bucks of contribution.
I pay 38% for that and I'm glad to do it.
Yes, quite.
You're the victim of an enormous charade.
Do yourself a favor, and look at the current electoral map, then compare it, state by state, region by region (the red and blue) with a gas price temperature map. Draw your own conclusions. Except for a few states with very small contributions to the electoral college, prices are UP in "blue states".
Enjoy.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
But how do you deal with all that smug?
By not whining about how I have no choice to drive my car no matter how expensive gas is?
It takes some lifestyle changes (and maybe relocation) to avoid a car-centric lifestyle, but it's not hard to do.
Right now it's a comparison of industrial strength electric motors with consumer gas engines. As the electric car will become more popular, the same trade-offs will be made (weight, durability, price) as for consumer gas engines.
Umm, what? Lets take this whole thing point by point. You're clearly suffering from a lack of actual knowledge. Let me help you with that. To put this in perspective, I work for an industrial transportation company. We have a large commercial fleet of vehicles, some of them EVs, most conventional. We also have a large warehousing and freight forwarding operation which makes use of vast quantities of industrial electric motors. So, we can be described as having a pretty good perspective on all of the various technologies involved, as well as what would be described as expert knowledge of the operational profiles of the most industrial equipment available.
Window wiper motors, window motors, fan motors all die multiple times before the engine fails. Most cars are wrecked with a capable engine. Most engines are not economic viable once difficult-to-reach seals need be replaced. Nevertheless, gasoline engines have a huge tolerance for maluse and neglect (excessive play, valve problems, etc.), electric tends to be more of the ON/OFF type.
Without regular maintenance (weekly oil and water, Three month PMI, yearly state inspection and daily pre-trip inspection of our vehicles, they would quickly become dangerously non-functional. Engine problems are the usual trouble and engine failure is frequent enough that our vehicle specifications require easy engine replacement procedures compared to passenger vehicles. We typically go through 2 to three engines in a vehicles operational life of fifteen years. Typical mileage on the vehicles at retirement is between 300k and 600k miles. 400k is considered quite good for one of our engines (They are rated for 10,000 hours or 300k miles). By contrast, most of our vehicles are taken out of service with the original wiper motors, fan motors (only a small percentage of the fleet has electric fan motors) or water pumps. Even more telling, we can use the stats for the belt drive motors in use in our local warehousing facility. The drives are rated at 18kW continuous with peak load handling of 30kW for 10 seconds. We have around seventy five of them in our warehouse. I have been stationed in this building for ten years, and in that time, we have had one drive motor fail after a new variable speed controller was installed wrong and overloaded the motor (and itself). The MTBF on our motors from the manufacturer are 100,000 hours continuous operation, and 75,000 hours for 50% rapid duty cycle operation, but in our operation we have many motors that are well past the 200,000 mark, and none that have failed in service. The manufacturers don't even list MTBF information because its pretty meaningless. I had to go digging to even find Baldors specs on it, and they have a disclaimer that they really don't know what the expected life span is because almost all of their motors are decommissioned long before they fail. Whenever you hear about motor failures, its always because they're being overloaded / pushed beyond spec.
When both applications are compared in the same industrial environment, large freighters, heavy machinery, I've seen electrical (sub)engines always need be replaced multiple times, under far less demanding conditions. wartsila.
Yeah, whatever. Making electric motors last is a matter of correctly sizing the motor for the application. If you're constantly frying motors, its because you used a motor that is not large enough for the application. Going to the next size up will fix most of that problem for you. A sufficiently sized and maintained electric motor can and will last decades. We have several 275kW Baldors in our building that have been in service since the 50's. They are never run past 25% capacity which keeps them nice and cool. B
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted