gas price thread

i went to get gas today fearing it would go up and i saw $1.89 at my local gasbuddy fav. when i got there it was $1.95 but still cheapest except for costco. filled the honda wagon and got another 5 Gallon in a jug for my pickup. $25.41 and it would been $54 just few years ago.

that really changes the equation for electric cars and hybrids.

i do think there will be deals for people who wann drive on juice or hybrids. i think the extra $2k-3k premium will not only disappear but the old 'price of the battery replacement', lack of range, etc will come back and maybe they will get discounted before the cycle completes.

remember the gument says the car companies have to meet an average fuel efficiency number in the near future so they will discount the EVs so they use them to bring down the averages since they make their big money on the fat cars.

so the price of new EVs and hybrids is not gonna climb but may remain flat or lower as technology improves and they can write it off on more volume if they can sell more EVs by continuing the discounts.
 
short covering rally ran outa steam when inventory numbers poked their head onto the trading screens.

in respect to good deals coming for BEVs, i just saw this Leaf for sale and i bet it would only take a clean $10k cash to buy it:

http://portland.craigslist.org/clc/cto/4875619140.html
 
I'm definitely considering something like that used Leaf in the near future. My Honda Civic hybrid is approaching 200k mi. Still runs OK, but is developing some issues.

Gas up .25 in just a week here. I think this is largely due to speculation by investors in the futures market. Personally, I think trading futures in commodities should be banned.
 
We are diving cheep Hondas until we can get a Model 3 or maybe something else if it comes along. We have 2 CRXs and 1 92 civic all we got for ~500 each and they require little maintenance as well as they are very fuel efficient also easy to work on so its good enough for now...
I ride my DIY Zero as much as I can and I am just about to put the leaf motor into my CRX for my commuter.
Chantal also has a scooter and electric beach cruiser I built her.
I have laughed at people who worry about gas prices since I started building electric stuff because instead of worrying about the price of gas I am working on a solution for me and my family.
We will start installing some solar this spring and hope to be energy neutral within a couple years.
 
i disagree. i think it is easier and faster to just buy a used EV and work from there. i am especially interested in watching the Leafs that turn up at the insurance auctions. there is one in seattle on monday you should consider purchasing and towing back into Canada imo. a little body work instead of decades of modifying and tweaking a leaf motor into a CRX frame and then have the authorities refuse to give it a legal title would be too much time and effort lost for me.

my ZENN car is 35mph limited but i can go almost anywhere in this metro area without going on the freeways. i find the experience of driving on low speed neighborhood streets to go across town more interesting than driving on the 4 lane main drags and stopping every mile for another stop light because of the type of road the main collectors are.

i did buy the honda civic hybrid so i could follow up on peter perkins IMA control software so i could add another 40Ah to the battery and use it. but i am almost content with driving the HCH just as it is. my problem is that i do not drive much anymore so it just sits. worst of all possible worlds.
 
First off the authorities don't need to know the crx is electric and second they are not hard to deal with. Third the motor will take me a few minutes to mount so no big deal. And lastly the leaf in Seattle is not easy to bring across the border importing things like that is very costly/time consuming.
 
Also the leaf weighs 2x what the finished crx will with 1/3 the HP!!!!
 
i agree it is a good project, but very few people could even come close to accomplishing this feat imo.

you are in the pinnacle group who can do this stuff but very few people reading this even know where to start. very few people even have a place to park since they live in apartment buildings too.

but this period of cheaper EVs and hybrids could be limited by the duration of this collapse in the price of gas. some of us think the loss of investment and the huge numbers of skilled rig hands that are already laid off and even more to come will put a big dent in oil production and the amount of surplus is only about 1-2% of worldwide demand so the price could rebound to over $100 quickly depending on how the pressure is resolved between Saudi and Russia/Iran/Syria.

so lotsa leafs coming off lease, need for dealers to sell more new ones with lower sales already (15% down in jan) and more and more people who bot their leaf outright needing to do something new now that their car is 4 years old so they need replacement.

also the price you pay depends on the market as well as condition. portland has a strong EV market and this car in clackamas is 20-40% cheaper than other listings. but it would be even more in SFbay area or seattle. jmho.
 
Nissan is commited to the leaf so I think there will be more and more of them available.
 
Im not seeing any increase in Bev or hybrids, at least in the low cost range, locally.

Converting a car to electric looks very expensive. You can easily drop 5k on just a motor and controller. Best to buy up someone elses conversion. There is almost zero market for them. I see them sit on CL forever, even at very good prices.
 
I know of at least 3 Cheverolet Volts running around my neck of the woods, which is a pretty good number. I saw a couple of Tesla Model S last year when we were competing for the Gigaplant, but since then not one in New Mexico. I see a completely electric moped running around Alamogordo all the time to and fro from Walmart. I think all electrics are starting to gain a foothold albeit still probably only 1% around my area.
 
Federal reserve bank of dallas just said they expect almost 150,000 job losses in texas over the next year from fall in capex with the price of crude under $60.

i think the Bakken and Williston basin is already over 40k lost and heading to 75k jobs lost.

some of us expect rig counts to drop 10%/week soon. maybe in march.
 
Have you seen the price chart of oil? It had it's biggest 3 day run in many years, last week. We are still at 6 yr lows.

http://www.texasgasprices.com/Retail_Price_Chart.aspx
 
Hillhater said:
Oddly, diesel price is still dropping here ?
Click to expand...

They may have bought a lot at a low price and it took time to burn through their old high price stock. In reality the petrol/diesel is bought at many intervals over the year and there is probably a delay of several weeks inherent in pump prices. The price you pay today is probably the market price of four to six weeks ago - depending on the reserve levels.

Petrol stations typically only have a margin of 4 to 5 per cent so prices are close to market value with taxes and distribution added to the final price. The competition is usually fierce and a lot of people behave irrationally going out of their way to get good prices even if they are misguided and it costs them more when they factor in extra fuel costs. Having low prices is very important for stations a lot of which really make their money from selling ancillary products.

Edit: By low prices I meant in relation to other petrol stations. Obviously, if you are a petrol station you can't sell petrol/diesel below cost price.
 
Article didn't mention that's a troubled refinery, not very productive because there's ALWAYS SOMETHING. But there are a few others having less spectacular shutdowns this week - Management operating equipment during the strike is said to be causing early maintenance needs. Demand shall rise, supply shall fall.
 
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