How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

[thetruecoolness]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

Well given I wrecked my car and was without one for over a month waiting for another one, it hasn't affected me too much (ironically I spent more money on gas money for friends and family taking me places). Of course I once again have a Prius, so 46-47 mpg for me, and my drive to work is 6 miles round trip, so assuming I only visit my parents 2 times a month I go through a tank in maybe a month (and that's only about 10 gallons). Of course I also have a good income too.

Though I know Terr to usually err to the side of pessimism, I'm more concerned with the effect this will have on the world, and how quickly that effect may spread to me. It's not just US that are dependent on oil for a lot of our transportation and shipping.

Also I had no idea a Metro could get 50mpg, that's just insane.

If Marta didn't suck so much I would consider using it more, but as it is it's 1.75 a trip, so it's a lot cheaper to just drive to work given I use maybe a gallon a week. Waiting on the Bus for an hour and 30 minutes to get home sucks, took me 6 hours to take a plane from Miami to Atlanta, then take the train and transfer to a bus for the last 4 miles of my trip, it's only a 2 hour flight. Would have been 3 hours max if I had a car.

[JPS]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

its only going to get worse. we should of kicked the greedy oil mongers to the curb already. great job bush, oil is now 4x more expensive then when you first got into power.

Bush is in on it, he had to sell all his stock and everything else in the oil business when he got elected president otherwise it would have been a conflict of interest and he couldnt have become president.

His plan all along was to take over the oil fields overseas, and he used Hussein as a scapegoat to get to them, one of my friends whos been overseas has said everything that is in those oil fields now is written in english.

Anyways, back on topic, I drive 48 miles round trip per day to work plus run a few errands here and there, gas is $3.89 right now, and it normally cost me about $50-$60 every two weeks.

I have a 2001 Honda CR-V so I get decent gas mileage for an SUV

*note in the link thats assuming gas is $3.39

[Caciss]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I can't afford food!

[AbstractOrigin]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

It's about $4.07 for unleaded here too.

I drive a 95 Chevy Monte Carlo and it gets decent mileage.
It also helps that I pretty much only drive it to work 3-5 times a week
and to a friends house every so often.

[Translucid]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I drive 60 miles round trip to work. Suckzzzzz
however, I do drive a 2001 Corolla, gets me pretty good mileage. Gas around here will be $4 soon, as of now it costs me about $40 to fill up.

I do make enough to cover my expenses. My roommate covers rent, and I get food/all the bills each month. I might need to take out another student loan for next semester, though...

[Denmo]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I get 3.95-3.99.

I drive a car that gets about 25 mpg in the city, 30 on the highway. I have to drive to a job that's 20 minutes away by car. So I easily spend about $30 on gas a week going to and from work.

I combat it by turning off my car wherever and whenever possible, and driving at a more even and slower pace. I also shift it to Neutral when I'm at a stop light or drive thru.

I also don't fill up my car all the way... I usually only put in $10-15 worth, which gets me 1/4-1/2 a tank. Not sure if that helps but yeah.


Given the distance I have to drive to work, I feel my day is a waste unless I get at least 5 hours there.


I plan to buy an electric car when I have a stable job (hopefully by then they'll have one being manufactured). If not, I'll buy a hybrid...

[Funk]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

How do gas prices affect me?

Everytime I fill up I get kicked in the balls.

How 'bout that?

[Goufunaki]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

Around $4.60 for me. yay california!

[Riotsword]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

They're hovering at or just under $3.99 right now, I haven't seen it rise above the magic $4 a gallon just yet.

Neither I nor my girlfriend drive at the moment(Well, her car is shot right now anyway, mine is nonexistant), which is just as well, considering we're both broke...

Say, Terr(or whomever else who can answer), my girlfriend wants to know what kind of gas mileage an '86 Chevy Nova gets.

[orius]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

Why are they so high?

1) Peak oil/ Supply and Demand
2) Ongoing US dollar collapse
3) Oil speculators

In order of severity from top to bottom. Speculators are only perhaps 10% of the price increase.

That's about it. To be honest, this was coming for years now, there's only so much oil out there no matter what one's views on the environment, energy, economics, or technology are. But we wasted an entire generation after the 70's energy crisis and forgot all about it after gas prices went down. It's not just the politicians, it's also the voters that forget and pretty much went back to sleep.

It's not just declining supplies, it's also increasing demand from countries like China and India. I knew this would happen eventually, the troubling thing is that it's happening a bit sooner than I expected.

George Bush may actually do the deed, possibly declare martial law to stop dissent in the US, and if this happens there will be no 2008 election(nevermind the still present possibility of election rigging. The no-paper-tail electronic voting machines are still present).

He'd need military support to pull that off, and very seriously doubt that our generals are fond enough of him to do that. They aren't drones who are going to march off a cliff because he says so.

As for election rigging, either party could try to pull that, and it could be attempted by not just the feds, but local officials as well. I don't really see anything out of the ordinary for American politics happening in the fall.

[Perversion]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I had thought about buying a car when I got some money saved up (which I now do), but wit the price of gas, plus actually purchasing the car, plus car insurance, title, plates, etc, it's still more beneficial for me to take the bus and the occasional taxi. When I was in a "management" position, my store managers used to hound me about purchasing a car, because my availability needed to be more open for the position I was in. Now that I'm in sales, nobody cares. In fact, because I'm one of (if not THE) top producer(s) in the department, my temporary boss has taken to giving me Sundays off, due to no bus service, and my having trouble getting rides on those days that are not gonna cost me $25, which is what a taxi would cost.

So, yeah. $1.25 bus to work, $1.25 bus from work five days a week...$12.50. Let's say average 2 taxi rides per week (if I have to close)...$8.00 each (The fare is only $5.70 to $6.30 usually, but I always just give them $8.00 including tip...I've had jobs that relied on tips, plus, they might be losing a $20-$30 fare by taking me on my $6.00 fare, so I compensate them). So that's $16 plus $12.50 a week. $28.50. Round to $30 for incidentals, multiply by four, and transportation costs me $120 a month. Now, compare that to car expenses. I think I'm fine with public transportation for a while. I've been riding the bus since 2001, so I'm used to it.

As for how it's affecting me, Pace bus service (part of the CTA....Chicago Transit Authority) did not get the funding it needed from the state late last year/earlier this year, and there was danger of the route I NEED getting cut on Saturdays, as well as it already not running on Sundays, plus no more late night (9:45 PM) service to the mall. I was in a tight place fo a bit, but the governor passed a bill to get funding, with the stipulation that senior citizens ride for free. A LOT of routes actually were cut, but none that affected me. I'm guessing the funding issue was due, in large part, to the price of gas.

Also, the Chicago area has the highest average gas price as compared to anywhere else in the country. I usually do not pay attention to the prices as I do not drive, but I think the lowest I've seen for the past few weeks is about $4.17-$4.20 or something. People here would KILL for it to get back down to a "more reasonable" $4.07.


$4.60 in California, Gouf? I thought I remembered reading that it was the highest in the country here in Chi-Town.

[jvrlopez]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I haven't driven since February. I've only bummed rides, rode a taxi, took the bus, or walked (15 minute walk for a ciggarette, jesus!)

I'll be home for 20 days in a week. I'll get my car back and I'll let you know how those $4/a gallon prices treat me. The prices were like $2.50 when I left.

I can't wait to get to Japan and start driving on the right side of the car, on the left side of the road, and paying for gas by the liter.

[Jamos]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

I'm a ****ing Wal-mart cashier. How the hell do you think it is affecting me?!

[Sampson]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

my car takes upwards of 30.00-33.00 just to fill up the tank.

....





Try $80. Driving seventy miles to work round trip four days a week also doesn't help. I estimate that I spend about $110 a week on gas.

I was fine with gas at 3.80, but once it hit $4 it was cheaper for me to ditch the truck. (Dodge Dakota leases are super cheap, so until it got to that point it was cheaper to keep the gas guzzler)

I just bought a 03' sunfire. Not the greatest car on gas, but not bad either (22-30mpg). Cheap (<$8000) and low mileage (<40,000). I was gunning for a honda civic or a toyota, but it's not possible to find a good used one at a reasonable price living in the metro Detroit area. People just don't buy as many foreign cars here so the market for them is not the greatest.

Also, Terr, I was wondering what you thought about the Chevy Volt now. I know you linked me to a few blogs back in the day talking about how it was a potential hoax, but I've personally talked a few GM engineers since then who have worked on the breaking system for it. It's quite a real project. Toyota also recently announced that they'll be releasing their own plug-in hybrid in 2010 to compete. The estimated MSRP is about $40,000 now; but again, I've heard that GM may undercut and sell the car at 20-30k just to get it into the market. (Like MS did with Xbox)

[thetruecoolness]

Re: How are gas prices affecting you? (Again)

Well from what I've seen the Prius beats it out hands down in terms of cost over lifetime. The gap will be widened even more when the plugin Prius comes out maybe around 2011 with 55 mpg without exclusively using the electric engine.

Article linked from EV world http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the...-toyota-prius/.

So basically if you want the best gas mileage without killing your self on the car loan the Prius is and will be the way to go. At 40-50K you might as well start looking around for a custom built full electric.