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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.
On this side of the pond, we're paying a bit under $8/gallon...
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;)
I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism.
No, you're paying the price for turning the state into one big freeway. Gas in CA is more expensive because it uses a special formula, without which air in the state would be unbreathable.
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
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
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?
Neither. We're just a terribly spread-out and need lots of fuel.
Your fuel consumption has nothing to do with the size of your country. It is caused simply by a lack of (willingness to introduce) any form of requirements for providing commercial facilities alongside new residential developments, combined with the general mindset that you need a car to get anywhere that this has produced.
My Czech friend's parents marveled constantly while here about how distant everything was from everything else. "You need to drive just to get a loaf of bread?" Yep.
This is where you have a point: the combination of urban sprawl and lack of (use of) public transit means you need to do many short trips. But that doesn't mean I agree with grandparent ... obviously the price of anything increasing that much over such a short period of time is painful.
I don't think Europeans understand just how large the USA relative to Europe and how less populated it is (perhaps a result of seeing Mercator projection maps that exaggerate Europe's size).
I don't think you understand that Europe is a fairly large group of sovereign nations, of wildly different geographical size and layout. Sweden has a population density of 20.6/km2, yet is larger than California (population density 93.3/km2). Certainly people commute comparable distances around Stockholm to what people do around Silicon Valley.
Consider this: the distance from San Diego, California, USA to Bangor, Maine, USA is greater than the distance from Stockholm, Sweden to Delhi, India.
And how many times per year do you usually drive from San Diego to Bangor? Yes, the US is a huge country, but that is unrelated. People in the US tend to fly instead.
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.
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.
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
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