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Excellent point. Many of the 'new ideas' being pursued today were also the hot topics during the last price spike. What happened? Prices dropped, and the economics disappeared. The only way to move to these alternate technologies is with long term high gas prices.
I happen to be someone that agrees with the saying that time is money and it's also a limited resource. For the typical commuter making his 20 mile daily trip slowing down might only cost him a minute. No big deal since you probably wouldn't have found a productive use for that minute anyway but for the long haul trucker we are talking about some serious time and as you also pointed out, some serious boredom. I'm guessing the typical trucker drives about 10 hours a day. Slow down from 70 to 55 and that day is now more like 12.5 hours.
The idea of conserving just isn't going to cut it. It won't even slow the bleeding. At best it will reduce the acceleration in bleeding. As a country we actually have conserved over the past few years. Our consumption has been essentially flat despite the fact that we have more drivers on the road. It just doesn't matter with the growing consumption in other parts of the world. A lot of this growth is being driven by new drivers so it's pretty unreasonable to expect places like China and India to cut back because it would essentially amount to telling the people that currently aren't driving in these places that they can't join the ranks of drivers. The only benefit of conserving is that it will personally save you some money. Again that's a decision for the individual to make and it depends on the value he places on his time and his threshold for the boredom induced by 55 mph on roads designed for 80 mph.
There is no free lunch re having a nice viable woods area. Lots of work to keep undesirables out as well as cutting down dead stuff.
On gas - sometimes have to do some clearing/maintenance in hot months with mosquitos prevalent. Will set up a running lawnmower and running weedwacker nearby while wearng a mask. These keep the mosquitos away. The cost of the gas to run these items would never be an issue even if it were $25 a gallon. Do not like to use foggers.
This is exactly my point. Why should I be restricted to snail pace 55 just to make up for other guys who embarass themselves with heavy SUVs ?
Anyway, The bottom line is how for someone to lower his/her yearly gas consumption.
In my case, despite going 95 mph on Europe motorways (where possible and in a safe way, thank you snakew), I used 250 gallons gas with my V8 740i. (4500 miles in one year). Despite having a pretty thirsty car, I count in the 25% motorist who use the lowest amount of fuel.
The little trick is that I avoided city traffic as much as possible and kept the V8 for week-end outings. the 6 mile daily commute was done by bicycle or by 70 mpg scooter should the weather be more challenging.
Of course I support lowering Co2 levels and combating the greenhouse effect. There is an extra incentive that keeps me determined in my combat though :
If I filled the 740i tank from empty at today's EUR/USD rate and today's gas prices, I break the USD 200 barrier. I just thinked twice before taking the car (sold it when left to China).
You guess I shrug when I hear people complaining when filling their truck cost USD85
I don't think we need stupid regulations to save gas. Expensive gas will do the job better than anything else. The price of gas WILL raise to unprecedented levels anyway, and quicker than we think. Rather to do it gradually, I advocate a brutal rise that will wake people up and have them reconsider the way they use their cars.
The current US price of gasoline is still dirt cheap imho. It does not include the horrendous costs of the Middle East venture, it does not include the cost of solving the resulting pollution and climate change issues, it does not cover the development of alternative infrastructures as I believe it should.
Collecting 2-3 USD extra tax per Gallon would raise extra cash to be invested in a manhattan project dedicated to drastically lower America's dependency to oil. Any further delay will be very painful to our children.
I agree completely and the amount of venture capital flowing into these endeavors is proof of this. That's the main reason I used to advocate a large gas tax. No need for that now since the market has accomplished this on its own. Whatever drain this has on our present economy and standard of living will be more than offset by the future, lasting benefits derived by transitioning from our dependence on foreign oil.
The total driving time is mandated by federal law which changed a year or two ago. It may be a total of 10 hours. Trucking people will just need to change their delivery times to adjust for the slower speeds needed to conserve. The tenet that they would take longer implies that it would okay for them to drive 90-100 in the trucks that will do that because they would get there sooner.
>As a country we actually have conserved over the past few years.
The conservation has been superficial. Some people have been conserving while others bought 14 mpg Tundras and Sequoias, etc., and drive as they wish rather than conserving. Look at all the large box vehicles including pickup trucks being used by one person for a long commute where the truck itself is not a work truck. That would 90% of the vehicles heading along I75 yesterday when I drove south.
Think of all the fuel that would be conserved if the more efficient cars had been purchased through the last decade rather tha inefficient cool trucks for those commutes!
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Someone stop the Chinese from stealing my dinner! :P
Maybe SYPG = Square yards per gallon?
or maybe GPA? Gallons Per Acre
You make a valid point. If the trucker has a load of strawberries going from CA to NY the difference between averaging 55 MPH and 70 MPH is a full 12 hour day. That could mean the difference in the NY market having strawberry pie or strawberry concentrate. We need alternatives not repressive speed limits. I think we had a very long thread on that subject a while back. Not worth rehashing.
That's even worse. Slowing down now will actually cost truckers extra days instead of extra hours in a day. I really don't know anything about the trucking industry but I've got to believe this will result in a trucker making fewer deliveries in a year. I don't believe these guys get paid by the hour so won't this cut into their income? Will this be more than offset by their fuel savings?
Hauling produce or any perishable does not allow for a casual trip cross country. When I took my trip to TX. The sections of Interstate 10 that I could not avoid were moving much faster than 70 MPH. I was in the slow lane cruising at 70 MPH and it was a steady stream of semi trucks going by me at 80 MPH plus. You can thank those that made the hourly rules. Though I do believe it is better to go 70 MPH while you are awake than 55 fighting sleep deprivation.
It's called a train.
Typical American myopia. I'm not singling you out, just noting the sentiment. It is shared by many I'm sure. We have a strong tendency to not look beyond our individual sphere of experience. Conservation benefits everyone, and the benefits extend beyond economics and thrills.
Conservation benefits everyone, but only if everyone conserves. If I use less gasoline, I'll see a savings in my wallet, but chances are, someone else is just going to use that gas. It has to be a group effort.
True, but any time you try to fight human nature, you lose. The last go-round with 55 mph limits was a disaster, turning a very large fraction of the driving public into willful 'criminals'. Instead of fighting human nature, use it - higher prices will automatically make some people slow down and others buy more-economical vehicles. I'd be fine with a requirement of a large MPG meter required in all new cars - education makes a big difference.
so true
If you beleive, as I do, that we police the Middle East for it's oil, then you will see just how rediculously subsidized each gallon of gas really is. There's alot of blood in every gallon of gas.
I do see hope with the increase in fuel costs but worry where the profits go and how those profits help shape public policy and perception. The Bush Administration still advocates drilling our way out of our dependance on foreign oil as opposed to change. :surprise:
I have a neighbor who bought a Dodge Hemi pickup a couple/few years ago and had used it for 80 mile daily round-trip commutes. He bought a used mid-size sedan last year for that the commute to save gas and the pickup is parked during the week.
One of few positives about rising gas prices is that economics will come into play with more and more people selecting sensible efficient sized vehicles for their commutes, tasks and other trips.
$4/gallon is probably reducing the amount of non-work pickup driving miles. If $5, $6 and up is coming, maybe we will get to the day when a pickup truck is "just" an appliance to be used by farmers, ranchers and others needing that functionality. Never really understood why so many, including teen boys and young men, were/are so fascinated by driving a non-working use pickup.
These guys know about the cost of time. It's not just about the environment, it's for the bottom line as well.
Airlines are even slowing down to save fuel:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-05-02-slow-fuel_N.htm
MPG Smackdown: Focus vs Jetta vs Prius vs Smart (Karl on Cars)
I can't fully explain it, but I remember when I was a kid, we all thought pickup trucks were cool. Now when Smokey and the Bandit came out, we all thought big rigs were cool, but somehow, that carried over even to pickup trucks and other "lesser trucks".
Maybe for us kids back in the 70's and 80's, there was just that fascination with being able to sit up high and look down on the other cars? Back in those days, pickups were still mainly just used for real work, and the term SUV probably hadn't even been invented yet, so most kids were just used to the car experience. When I was a kid I went to a private school from 6th-8th grade, and you had to pay extra for the bus, so a lot of families carpooled. My Mom & stepdad worked, so my retired Granddad would usually do the driving for us. He had a '76 GMC crew cab with an 8 foot bed that was always guaranteed to be bigger and sit up higher than almost anything else in the parking lot. I remember the other kids LOVED riding in that thing!
Granddad bought an '85 Silverado to replace it, and he let me drive it sometimes. I have to admit, I thought it was a fun experience. And with its 305 V-8, it was a lot quicker than many 4- and 6-cyl cars back then. Today that truck is a bit of a dog, but back then it didn't seem to be. After he died, Grandmom held onto it, and I'd drive it to the campus once in awhile when I was in college, to keep it from sitting. All my friends wanted to pile in on those days that I drove it.
I still have that truck, and use it mainly when I need it, although my car-less roommate has been borrowing it to go to work (less than 5 miles away, so it's not THAT evil on gas). Now I don't get the feeling that I'm Jerry Reed hauling 500 cases of bootleg Coors halfway across the country when I'm driving it, but I do sorta like the way it feels. It's easy to get into and out of. Visibility is excellent. And it's bulky enough that it doesn't take on that much damage when something tries to run up under its rear bumper (which happened 3x in the course of like 4 months a couple years back)
I do agree that market forces, or economics, are much more influential than legislation, especially on behavioral choices. I don't deny that economics have influence, my point was that we have a tendency to not go beyond that very often. I'm guilty as well. I think first about how any given choice affects me. I think part of the problem is that we stop there too often. It is hard to overcome that.
Yeah, it does become a bit of a catch-22. Personally, I do try to conserve when I can. But I'm not fooling myself into thinking that every time I plant a tree or let part of the yard re-forest, or save a gallon of fuel here and there, that I'm saving the planet. Every little bit helps, though.
Never really understood why so many, including teen boys and young men, were/are so fascinated by driving a non-working use pickup.
I have been more baffled by the "mom" affinity with big SUV's. My sister loves them. Currently drives a Land Cruiser. Her kids have a Tahoe (son), a QX4 (daughter), and a 4 Runner (other daughter, this one purchase just 2 months ago). My sister thinks of them as safer, so that's what their children got. The Land Cruiser is more justified by the trailer and boat frequently tagging along behind it.
I don't believe that. The whole reason we've invented these devices that use energy is to improve our standard of living. So when confronted with a limited supply of energy the idea of conservation seems like the simple minded, last resort approach that could actually result in lowering our standard of living. Slowing down for instance represents to me a step backwards in the evolution of transportation.
I'd prefer to see us focusing on developing more renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal, etc. If we fully developed these sources they could more than meet our growing need for energy and it's not like they are going to run out so what benefit is their in conserving something like solar energy.
Oil will never run out but it will one day be prohibitively expensive and at that point alternatives will not be a choice but a necessity. Conserving gas/oil just pushes back the date that we must face this inevitability. It's sacrifice for the sake of procrastination.
You may also want to think about how much fuel is used to transport your food, and what your choices at the market have on the amount of fuel being used.
- Do you buy much food that comes from 5,000 miles away? or 20 miles away?
- Did your food have to be shipped to a factory, highly processed, packaged, and shipped a few hundred to a thousand miles to you?
The same goes for many other goods that you buy. Use plastics and you've used oil.
Do you draw a distinction between standard of living and lifestyle?
Certainly we have a growing need for energy. I sometimes wonder how much of it is really need.
Regarding oil, it shows up in much more than fuel. It is amazing just how ubiquitous it is.
With a fairly fixed amount of oil, the U.S. population growing, more people globally earning more money, how does anyone think that everyone is going to get the same amount of oil/gasoline as before? There are going to be winners and losers, and that is determined in a peaceful, fair way by who is willing to pay the most for it.
You are not entitled to a certain amount of cheap gasoline because you are an American, your neighbor can afford it, or what you're used to from prior years.
Hopefully we can adjust to other energy sources as the price rises. In the meantime many people are going to be forced to use less, or work more to get more $ to outbid others.
Anyway, I've seen it first hand that high fuel prices work pretty good at curbing speeds. I don't think anybody exceeded 65 mph on my trip to Carlisle two weeks ago.
In other words, we'll go back to the day when only such people drove these vehicles. As late as the early 1980s, the only people I saw driving SUVs were actual sportsmen. High fuel prices will put the "sport" back in SUV.
Standard of living is probably a subjective assessment. One way to measure standard of living would be the lifestyle options you have to choose from. Tribal people living in huts don't have much of a choice when it comes to their lifestyle. Someone like Ed Begley Jr. has many choices but chooses a fairly austere lifestyle. So I'd say that there is a definite distinction between standard of living and lifestyle.
The fact that so many people are complaining about how high gas prices are negatively impacting their standard of living leads me to conclude that in the US affordable energy is a vital factor in us maintaining the standards we've become accustomed to. Unfortunately my crystal ball tells me that the future doesn't look bright for cheap gas. And, IMO, conserving fuel, even if done collectively, will not significantly impact the price we pay at the pump. So we're left with high gas prices or finding an alternative.
Certainly we have a growing need for energy. I sometimes wonder how much of it is really need
Well that might be another way to measure standard of living. A person that has only what he absolutely needs is barely surviving. So the differential between what we have and the bare necessity level would represent our standard of living.
Regarding oil, it shows up in much more than fuel. It is amazing just how ubiquitous it is.
While that's true the transportation sector accounts for the vast majority of the US petroleum consumption.
Accident and fatality rates have been going down almost every year since the beginning of the automotive era. These rates also went down when the national 55 mph limit was lifted. These rates continue to go down even as many states are raising their speed limits. The year that the 55 mph limit was enacted did not show a deviation from this overall trend and neither did the year when the limit was repealed.
As far as conservation goes it would be tough to attribute that to the lower speed limit. This was the same period where the Japanese automakers first started making big inroads into the American market. The US fleet average mpg went up by over 50% in the 6 years following the enactment of a national speed limit. This is also when I first started driving. I can tell you from experience that the average speed on LA freeways was still 70+ mph.
Considering CARB stands for "California Air Resources Board", yes, you are correct that Maryland (or any other state) is not CARB state.
Not true at all (except the part about maryland). Several states, including much of the Northeast, have adopted CARB regulations. My state, NY, is a CARB state.
I quote the Manhattan project because as a state project, a country put all its might into researching , experimenting and finding something.
Regardless of how good or bad we consider the result of the research (the A bomb) I look at how powerful people can be when they really really WANT to do something.
I think the real enemy of the US is the pollution and all its long term consequences. it is dangerous because insidious, creeping, settling itself and becoming part of the family, having people getting used to or considered as inevitable.
I heard the Iraqi adventure would have cost something like 1000 billion USD since 2003. I just imagine half of this amount being used for real oil alternative initiatives :
- we could build 50.000 km of high speed /urban/freight railway to cut car, plane and truck use.
- we could launch a giantic R&D programme to develop electricity storage technologies, Photovoltaic efficiency boosting and nuclear fusion, electricity generation through algae....
- we could develop groundbreaking climate control technologies (climate control may be the second oil consumer after the cars
- we could cover 25 % of the US with forests (a few % today only)
- we could develop an electric car, the real alternative to current gas cars.
take fusion for instance. it is estimated that we won't have working fusion reactors before 50 years. You may remember how painful the ITER project was, especially for the funding, with a global 16 Billion Euros spread over 30 years and shared with so many countries.
Now what would be the outcome if instead of xx million per year, the US put 100 billions on it right now , demanding results as adamantly as for a major national security challenge? I have the feeling the answers are within our grasps.
My initiative would be not taking the money from the people in the first place
Actually, yes, it probably does. We just got back from a 400 mile trip so we decided to take my wife's 2000 323i rather than my 2003 Avalanche. I drive 65mph (in order to get 20 - 22mpg), so she didn't want it to take that long. She drove us 80 - 90mph for the whole trip (these are Montana roads, so we'd only see another car every 25 minutes) and when we got back, we filled the tank and had gotten 30.1mpg. Her car seems to get the same 30mpg whether it is driven 55, 75, or 85. My truck only gets 20mpg or better if I hold it 65mph or less. Going 75mph drops it down to 18mpg.
I wish we could get the BMW diesels (and other compact diesels) over here. When we visit her family in Munich, we normally don't have to rent a car because the public transportation is so good. We have rented a car a couple times because the rental was cheaper than the train tickets to travel to northern Germany.
Last time we had the BMW 1 series wagon with the smaller of the two diesels they offer and a manual tranny. It gets around 60mpg with normal driving (75mph). On the road trip we took, about 3 hours each way, we were traveling between 100mph and 140mph...and got passed by lots of other cars. (By the way, I come from a background with experience driving at these speeds, so don't worry about the silly guy going out and crashing because he went fast for the first time in his life just because it was legal). Anyway, we put on several hundred miles each way. When the trip was done and the numbers were converted and crunched, we got almost 50mpg, so I believe those that say they easily get 60mpg driving closer to American speeds.
Do we get that car here? No, it wouldn't sell. They did decide to import the 1 Series but not the wagon/hatchback. We only get the coupe and convertibles with the inline 6 gas engines (3.0 liter or 3.0 liter with twin turbo) and not the 4 cylinders. Such a shame. Small diesels beat the heck out of hybrids if your driving is mostly hwy vs. the city driving where a hybrid excels. Someday maybe some manufacturer will release the talked-about diesel hybrids so we can get the best of both worlds.
It's takes weeks to a month to move items by train. Not the necessarily the actual transit (depends on if a transfer is needed), but because things get moved to the shipping yard waiting for a train, then get moved, then get offloaded and wait for a truck to come pick them up and transport them to the final destination. While i agree it is the best form of transporting hard goods, for so many reasons, you will never be able to transport produce or other such goods by train. Can you imagine how long those refridgerated cars would have to sit and burn fuel to keep the produce cool at the train yard?
Not true. Any conservation benefits everyone. It is not dependent on everyone doing it. Every little bit helps, no matter how small. It might not make a huge measureable impact, but it makes an impact. Then you start adding up all the little impacts, and you start to see measurable results.
If I use less gasoline, I'll see a savings in my wallet, but chances are, someone else is just going to use that gas. It has to be a group effort. "
If all things are equal (meaning everyone elses behavior stays exactly the same independent of your behavior), your conservation does make a difference. Someone else isn't going to use 10 extra gallons in a month just because they heard you were using 10 less. They'll use what they'll use anyway. No more. No less. So what you save is making a difference. Just another way to look at things. So you'll help out both your wallet and ease the use of petroleum.
It's been done before.