Gas prices

I'm all for electric vehicles, just need to be prepared for it, that's all, and we as a country are not. Car MFG's are still figuring it out too, trust me I worked for one.

Jeff said:

My views and your views are completely irrelevant. I live in a world of facts. That you believe that people can't charge their cars at home is a pretty good indicator that you not only don't know the facts, but you're not interested in learning what they are.

So show where you're "facts" come from. Not CNN, MSNBC, FOXNEWS either. And how do you know my facts are wrong? Prove it to me.

You:
Can you charge you car at home yet? I'd venture to say no.

Me:
[posts photo of cars charging at home]

BlueGemini said:

Yeah, and how many electric vehicle owners are there? Show me that number, I bet it's very small.....so to my point if EVERYONE is forced to go that route this country IS NOT READY FOR IT. You want to do it right, bring back nuclear power, a true clean energy, then you can get rid of fossil fuels. but then you have nuclear waste to deal with.

Why am I interesting because I don't agree with your views? Funny how that works. That means you're an interesting character as well.

You don't know my views. You just like to argue and you've chosen a certain side on everything. Again, you're an interesting character.

NUFF SAID

BlueGemini said:

So show where you're "facts" come from. Not CNN, MSNBC, FOXNEWS either. And how do you know my facts are wrong? Prove it to me.

Which of Jeff's facts are you disputing?

BlueGemini said:

I'm all for electric vehicles, just need to be prepared for it, that's all, and we as a country are not.

We also weren't prepared for internal combustion-powered vehicles, but we figured it out, and here we are. I don't understand the "we're not ready" argument, it's nonsensical. I mean, do you think that there were gas stations on every corner in the late 19th century?

Car MFG's are still figuring it out too, trust me I worked for one.

Some are, like Tesla, which still can't produce a quality vehicle, and several other BEV-only companies that also vastly underestimated what an incredibly massive and expensive undertaking mass producing a vehicle is.

Meanwhile, Ford has already sold all the F150 Lightnings it can produce this year, and is investing over $5 billion in Blue Oval City for additional manufacturing capacity. GM is preparing a deluge of BEVs, as is Stellantis. And this is on top of Rivian, Lucid, etc.

I've worked in the industry (tier 1/2, BIW manufacturing) for a while now, and there has never been industry investment at this level. It's massive. BEVs are coming, and not because of some "agenda" that's being "pushed on" anyone. It's because BEVs are the immediate future, if not the present, of the auto industry, buggy whip manufacturers be damned.

Daughter wanted me to rent a Tesla next week while we are in LA. I laughed and declined. In hindsight I'm wondering if I should have done a little more looking into it and estimated what my gas consumption would be. A Tesla rental for the week vs a small SUV and whatever gas we are going to consume at California prices.

She may have been on to something.

We have had a Mustang Mach-E for about a year now. No problem charging at home. We have had solar for 10 years now so this helps with power usage during the day. We have driven from Phoenix to Las Vegas a couple times with this car and had no issues finding chargers for the trip.

Our 2nd car is a Toyota Prius Prime that I drive to work and local. I'm able to charge at work which comes in handy since this car needs almost daily charging.

I'm trying to buy a full EV to replace the Prius but they are hard to buy right now as the demand is through the roof as the supply is very limited. Many dealers are charging huge markups over MSRP.

Gas prices are going to remain high if drivers don't change their driving habits. Drivers in the Pheonix area drive so fast that it has become very dangerous with road fatalities double from what they were pre-Covid. I drive around 5 mph over the speed limit on the highways and I'm usually the slowest driver. Many are doing 90 to 100 mph. We have a large amount of pickup trucks and SUV's on our roads. These drivers punch it at almost every light just to catch the next red light. You would think they would slow down with our average gas price being $5.69 per gallon.

My daughter and I were Virginia, Ohio and Michigan a couple weeks ago for our roller coaster vacation and saw very few people driving at such high speeds.

Well, body panel alignment issues aside, the only car I've kept for four years and only replaced wiper blades and an HVAC filter is a Tesla, so as far as I measure quality, that's pretty solid. Brakes are still essentially new, too.

Do you think it would blow BlueGemini's mind if I told him two-thirds of my electricity comes from the sky, lands on my roof, and much of the day makes my electric meter go in reverse?

Much like the moon landing, we all know your pictures are staged, Jeff.

^^ And to the Chief; we just spent a week out at Huntington Beach. I've never seen so many Teslas and other EVs zooming around. The amount of public charging stations was also notable.

I hope your rental contract is non-binding.

I would be curious to see what your numbers are. I would guess that you could rent an SUV for pretty cheap in LA right now given the gas prices. It is all going to depend on how many miles you plan to drive.

Jeff said:

Well, body panel alignment issues aside, the only car I've kept for four years and only replaced wiper blades and an HVAC filter is a Tesla, so as far as I measure quality, that's pretty solid. Brakes are still essentially new, too.

Admittedly, they are decent nowadays aside from panel alignment/cosmetic issues and HMI design, but that is something many manufacturers struggle with. I'm just especially hard on TSLA because of the smugly-ignorant way Musk approached vehicle manufacturing, which was basically "all the current automakers suck at making cars, it's so easy and simple, I could do it better in my sleep." Which was amusing to those of us who know better. :-)

And while Musk eventually admitted how ignorant he was, he sadly didn't learn a damn thing based on his ignorant free speech views we've learned in his quest to buy Twitter.

EDIT: Regarding gas prices, we just returned from a trip to Chrysler Belvidere, where the Cherokee is suddenly in demand again thanks to gas prices, and the round trip cost around $250 in gas to get there and back to SE MI. Pretty painful.

BlueGemini said:

I'm all for electric vehicles, just need to be prepared for it, that's all, and we as a country are not. Car MFG's are still figuring it out too, trust me I worked for one.

I agree with you i don't think we're ready for all electric vehicles yet either! IMO why can't we just make these vehicles more fuel efficient and have alot better mpg fuel economy for all vehicles?

From what I have seen, part of the info often cited in terms of availability to charge at home is based on a Carnegie Mellon study on charging issues.

https://www.cmu.edu/me/ddl/publications/2013-TRD-Traut-etal-Residen...arging.pdf

Its from 2013 so things have changed. But it makes sense that most of the people buying electric vehicles now can charge them at home. It would be a problem if you couldn't for many people so you wouldn't buy one right now if you couldn't charge at home. Based on costs of the vehicles, buyers are higher on income spectrum and thus more likely to live someone with a garage. Also more likely to have level of electric service that is needed.

People with less income are less likely to buy an electric vehicle (in part because of the cost and because of charging issues -- park vehicle on street or have older electric service that wouldn't support home charging).

But as noted, none of that is set in stone. Thinks can, and will, change. Will be interesting to see the impact on "gas stations at every corner -- often multiple ones" as electric vehicle penetration increases. Would expect the number of gas stations will decrease which will create further incentives to buy electric.

Ultimately the answer is all of the above. Continue to make vehicles more fuel efficient. And increase the number of electric vehicles and infrastructure to support them. But in terms of fuel economy, a big issue is that people want bigger and bigger vehicles (to a certain degree negating any fuel efficiency gains).

DragsterD said:
I agree with you i don't think we're ready for all electric vehicles yet either! IMO why can't we just make these vehicles more fuel efficient and have alot better mpg fuel economy for all vehicles?

But again, what you think and what your opinion is is irrelevant if it's contrary to reality. To Kevin's point, there are places where every fifth car is an EV. I picked up my kid from summer camp the other day, 5 miles away, and counted 12 Teslas, 1 Leaf and 1 drool-inducing Taycan. I haven't had to go to a gas station in almost 8 years. How ready do you need to be?

With regard to fuel efficiency, maybe you haven't been playing along, but burning stuff isn't working out for the planet. We can't get off of carbon-based fuel fast enough.

Between the stock market, gas prices and inflation Democrats in general are going to be in trouble at the polls. I’m NOT arguing it’s all, partly, or no fault of Democratic policies, I’m just stating what the majority of the public see. Remember the old quote about what drives votes? “It’s the economy stupid”. Unless the administration does something to reverse one or two of these trends it’s hard to believe republicans will not flip many seats. The liberals here seem to be a bit arrogant about this fact.

Jeff said:

And framing it as something any president has influence on, whether it's good or bad, seems like a special kind of willful ignorance to suggest that anyone would want or intentionally drive up prices. Biden could have campaigned on designating Santa Claus as his chief of staff. It's irrelevant because this is a lever he can't pull.

Santa Claus is cool with me, Jeff.
Even though he never brought me the baby brother I requested.

We elected a reality show moron to the White House because Americans not only don't understand basic civics and economics, but they're unwilling to. And now a segment of the population wishes he could have pulled off overthrowing the government and the will of the people. It's hard to be optimistic about our future.

While I'm sure Trump's accomplishments pale in comparison to yours, I'd hardly consider him a moron.
Biden's no moron either, but he is on the fast-track to becoming the worst president in history, and if nothing else, he needs to own his failures. Always blaming the other guy makes him look even more pathetic.

Trying to overthrow democracy is the worst thing that any president can do. There is no moral equivalent to that. Biden could tank the economy (though as Master D points out above, the market dynamic has no levers he can pull either, but he'll take the blame regardless), but the economy can come back. Dismantling democracy is not something we may come back from.

I think gas prices effects those people that go to parks spur-of-the-moment. People that make plans will go regardless of what the gas prices are. I remember when I used to go to CP every other weekend. I knew how much it took for gas to do round trip and how much I needed for food and whatnot. I look in wallet and see if I can afford to go or not.

As for cars, MPG is not my main priority when looking at a vehicle. For me, I need to like what it looks like (to me, I don't care what others think) and how comfortable it is to drive. My last couple of cars were Cadillac DeVilles. Loved them! And they got 20-25 mpg. Not bad for a bigger car! I once had a Grand Prix that got 30-35 mpg. But the first trip I took it on, I hated it! If I am going to be in the car for 10+ hours, I better be comfortable. We now have a 2013 Impala and it sucks! But financially, we don't have many options. We take what we can get and I can't be too picky. Would love to go back to a Caddy but don't see that happening anytime soon!

Agreed, MPG isn't everything and I am far more picky on the driving experience, handling and exterior/interior design if I am buying a car. For instance, my biggest pet peeve is the 'tablet' infotainment display covering the entire dash of most vehicles, which is a big nope from me.

We have three vehicles at the moment. We have a 18' Camry Hybrid that gets 40+ MPG regardless of how you drive, which is nice for trips and the work commute. It could have been 50+ MPG if I didn't go for the "SE" with the larger wheels and whatnot, but the handling/suspension was just superior and worth the tradeoff. Wouldn't probably even have this is my previous Scion xB didn't get hit/totaled and I ended up with this. At this point, it's basically the SO's car.

Her 2010 Mazda 3 that's been paid off forever gets 30+ MPG and is almost just used for trips to/from the dog park and such (it's basically the dogs car and he gets upset if we ever use it without him in it, judging us out the front window...). We have a husky, so you can imagine the dog hair in the thing!

Lastly, I have my 21' V8 Camaro 2SS that comes out when I want to have a bit more fun and weekend cruises. But shockingly, even with 455 HP and a 6.2L NA V8, I average low 20's and it is capable of around 28 MPG on the freeway. Pretty wild, considering my 158 HP Scion xB with a 4-cylinder had the exact same MPG. But obviously, one is WAY more fun than the other. I bought this vehicle simply because they are indeed, going away. No doubt. But I always wanted V8 muscle, so I had to jump on it before they all went the way of EV, which I am not against by any means, but sorry, you are not replacing the feel/vibration/sound of a NA RWD V8 with an AWD EV. I don't care if the torque delivery and 0-60 times are better with the EV, there is more than those parameters that make a vehicle fun/enjoyable if you use it for more than it simply being an appliance to commute with. But everyone has their preferences, of course, so just got to go with what works for you!

No doubt the next vehicle we buy years from now will be an EV of some sort, but I am in no rush to trade-in and buy another vehicle just to "save" some gas money. For how much we drive (short commutes and whatnot), it just wouldn't be worth it right now for us. We literally fill up once every 3-4 weeks and it's only 10-11 gallons at that in the Camry.