The former general counsel of Comcast Corp. was killed yesterday as he bicycled down Main Street in Moorestown, police said.
Stanley Wang, 67, of the 500 block of Sentinel Road, was traveling east on Main Street around 12:20 p.m. when the driver of a parked Dodge Dakota pick-up truck opened his door. Wang struck the door and was knocked him from his bike into the street.
Wang was then struck by a passing Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Kellie Gifford, 19, of the 100 block of Winthrop Avenue.
Wang, the former general counsel of Comcast, was taken to Kennedy Memorial Hospital - Cherry Hill, where he was pronounced dead at 1:08 p.m.
Stanley Wang, 67, of the 500 block of Sentinel Road, was traveling east on Main Street around 12:20 p.m. when the driver of a parked Dodge Dakota pick-up truck opened his door. Wang struck the door and was knocked him from his bike into the street.
In defense of dead bicyclist, he was in the "right" according to the "Rules of the Road" in my state. It says: "After parking and before opening vehicle doors, a motorist should first check for bicyclists".
Wonder if the former general counsel was riding to work in his current job to save on gasoline or was just out pleasure riding.
Seems like bicyclists have extra difficulty these days in anticipating driver's doors suddenly opening on them, given the amount of vehicles with tinted/shaded glass. Bikers can't see if a driver inside or not.
The bike rider was careless. It's a sad thing for the guy who opened the door and for the girl who ran over him and for his family; but he was careless, not giving himself an "out" in case someone opened the car door.
Not to blame anyone - it was his time to go. But as a bike rider, you need to be concerned with every possible danger and take precautions against it.
Personally, I would never ride at speed on a shared roadway alongside a row of cars in which any door could open at any time and whack me out into the vehicle traffic flow.
That's why they are called ACCIDENTS however - no one sees them coming and usually the knowledge to prevent them comes in afterthought.
Drivers are watching for other cars, not bicycles and motorcycles. I watched a lady pull out of a K-Mart parking lot right in front of a guy coming down the hill on his bike at a good clip. It totally smashed his bike and he flew over the top of the car. Not sure how badly he was injured. There was no place to go, when she pulled out.
I am sure we will read a lot more about bike & motor scooter accidents as people scramble for ways to beat the high price of gas. For someone that has ridden many years it is less of a hazard than the guy that out of desperation starts riding a bike to work.
The bike rider was careless. It's a sad thing for the guy who opened the door and for the girl who ran over him and for his family; but he was careless, not giving himself an "out" in case someone opened the car door.
Not to blame anyone - it was his time to go. But as a bike rider, you need to be concerned with every possible danger and take precautions against it.
The driver of pickup truck was careless and maybe will be found at fault depending upon Rules of Road of state involved.
This incident an example of why bike riders using regular roads, not bike paths, to go to work or for pleasure should pay surcharge on their health care premium
If the 67-year old was going to work trying to save gasoline money, was that not penny-wise, pound foolish.
Would have been entirely different outcome if 67-year old were in a car and properly belted up. Fortunes might have been reversed with pickup driver having some type of injury and 67-year old maybe shaken and perhaps bruised from air-bags.
I'd say in this case, it's a hard call as to who's really at fault. And I'm not talking about any law or statute, but more of a "natural law", I guess. If the guy in the pickup truck just blindly flung his door wide open into traffic and nailed a passing biker, then he's the one that caused that accident. But if he opened his door and the biker had time to stop but didn't, it's the biker's fault.
If this biker got flung out into traffic though, I'd tend to believe that the second scenario is what happened. Seems to me that if you open the door and the biker hits you, most likely they're going to hit the inside part of the door and just crumple, right then and there. Unless they try to swerve, out into traffic.
Like most accidents though, usually there's enough fault to go around. Even if someone does get held accountable, usually everybody had some part in causing that accident. The guy on the bike should have been more aware of his surroundings, the guy in the pickup should have looked before opening his door, and the girl in the Cavalier, upon overtaking a biker, should have been more cautious.
gary says, "Drivers are watching for other cars, not bicycles and motorcycles."
That's just true for careless drivers. When I'm in my car, I personally look for anything I might run into. As all smart people should do.
On my bike, I usually get a dirty look from car drivers who see me "too late" at an intersection, as if they think it's MY FAULT that they did not see me in time !!!
Safety is EVERYONE'S responsibility. Car drivers who cause accidents with bikers and bikers who cause the accidents with cars ought to both be punished equally.
Of course you're both right. Drivers should watch, but many don't. That's one reason I gave up motorcycles - very common cause of accidents is the "I didn't see him coming" crash. And that's with a 400lb. motorcycle and rider. Bikes, even more so.
It's the driver's fault per the statute noted above, and I bet most places have a similar law. But experienced bikers do learn to check for drivers sitting in cars - brake lights on, movement in the car or in the side view mirror, etc.
I almost took a peloton out one day when I first moved to Boise but I checked my rear view mirror just before popping the door open. Biking is big here.
Counter the occasional accident and death against the souls getting healthier by bike riding, and the health insurance premiums are more likely to fall.
No one noticed that Exxon/Mobile is getting out of the retail gas selling business?
It will take luck. Having the house for sale along with one of the 6 vehicles for sale is an attempt to pull irons out of the fire. Buying new before selling the old was a risk that so far hasn't worked out. The subcompact has to come along eventually but it won't drop my pain index much. The vehicle used the most for errands is an Astro that gets 14 city and 22 hwy when driven with a lead foot. It has no trade in value. A replacement subcompact that gets driven 4500 miles annually would not save anything compared to the 18 mpg avg for the Astro. The gas savings from a subcompact will take 3 years to just cover the initial sales tax on it. Of course, if the stores being close leads to boredom and then driving to far away stores just to kill time, then my expected driving of the Astro only 4500 miles a year as a benefit from moving will not happen. Then a subcompact could start to make sense, but there is still about $330 a year annual excise tax on a new car in my state, and It only goes down by $33 a year. The Astro has 0 excise tax because it is 10 yrs old.
There are several problems with the idea of space-based solar satellites, beaming energy back to Earth.
1) First and foremost they can be used as weapons as anything that emits energy could. They would be viewed as potential space-weapons by the international communty. And it would be tempting to anyone who had these, to make their target on Earth adjustable. You don't think the Pentagon would want to embed software in there to adjust their aim in a few seconds?
2) If there is an error, or a minor collision with space junk, the aim of the solar satellite might be knocked off. Maybe you set a city on fire, in a few seconds before it is shutdown?
So no I don't see large solar satellites beaming energy back to earth. It looks good from a theoretical standpoint in an innocent world, but not in reality.
No one noticed that Exxon/Mobile is getting out of the retail gas selling business?
Haven't seen it in the news, and I just checked my news RSS feeds. I also find it a bit hard to believe, as a full 50% of the gas stations in my area, if not more, are Mobil.
There are 12,000 independent Exxon stations - Exxon owns another 2,200 stations. You'll still get to buy their gas since the brands aren't going anywhere.
I heard the same thing and the gas stations will keep the Exxon/Mobile name but pay a licensing fee of some kind. This just supports that article I read about Exxon pairing their business down to its most profitable core as fast as possible. The writer had several reasons for this and one of them involved Exxon shutting themselves down into the form of a trust a few years after they have bought back all their stock.
I remembered your post when I saw the story yesterday. Fits right in with their strategy.
Of the 2,200 company owned stations, you know a lot of them in marginal locations or highly competitive markets won't get sold, at least not for gas stations.
One gas station that closed last year near town now is a storefront for scooter sales.
In the future, those disused Exxon stations could be converted over to stations that provide alternative fuels - hydrogen, electric recharging, ethanol, biodiesel, etc.
Most like scenario is that they will be abandoned or converted over to "no-name" outlets that sell subpar fuel that consists of a 50/50 mixture of kerosene and water with rocks, sticks, and bugs in it.
If you usually drive alone or with one passenger, sell what you are driving and buy a used Honda Insight. I'm averaging 66,8 MPG on this tankful and thats mostly around town. My truck sits untill I need to haul or tow something...
I was following the sales of Used Insights for a while on Ebay as I always liked them but IMO the prices are too high. As you said most of them have a ton of miles on them and they made so few in the last two years of production, 2005 and 2006 I think, that finding a relatively new one is very hard.
The Shell station that shut down close to my other home is still empty 3 years later. They dug up all the tanks and remediated the soil. It does not surprise me that Exxon is getting out of that business. They would be wise to sell their refined product as NO NAME gas and diesel. The lower the profile the less talk of stealing their profits with some wild windfall tax. We may not have to worry about over priced gas if all the companies decide it is a poor business to be in.
On this exact train of thought, I took a look a couple of nights ago on Auto Trader to see if I could find any Insights for sale. I found 3 NATIONWIDE, none with a stick as I would want, none closer than 1500 miles from my zip code, and all but one asking almost new prices for cars that were YEARS old with 50-100K on the clock.
Then I took a look on craigslist, in my region of 7 million people there was not ONE Insight for sale.
Saw a really nice one in a parking lot the other day though, all tricked out in red with these really nice (and not too big, in fact they may have been the same size as stock) black and red rims.
I would make the trade if I could find one with a stick and A/C, with around 60K miles. Problem is, so few were sold.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The only one I would even consider because it is a 2006 with low miles has a high bid of 24,000 dollars. :surprise: That is about 5,000 dollars more then the MSRP of a manual Insight when new.
...most people with Insights are probably holding onto them for dear life the way things are these days. Heck, Honda should bring them back, I'm sure there would be a HUGE market for them.
Honda built the Insight for only one reason. To have the highest mileage vehicle on the road. I read somewhere that it cost Honda $30k to make each Insight. They were never a mass produced vehicle. I would not consider one unless it was a stick shift. That CVT was problematical. I would think getting parts could be a real hassle in the near future.
Anyone got any idea why the Prius sales were off 31% in May over last year? Looks like Toyota is cutting back hybrid production. Are they losing money by selling so many hybrids while the rest of the line-up collects dust. Supposedly Toyota capped Prius at 175k. So if you want a Toyota you can buy what we got on the lot. Saturn hybrid sales are up which is good for GM...
They ran out of batteries for the Prius. I have seen many sources confirm this including some people on Edmunds that work at Toyota dealers and local Toyota dealers.
Also, IIRC, wasn't it last year when they put some incentives on them, production had caught up, and, apparently, exceeded demand for a while. Now the cupboard's bare, so to speak. This also relates to the 'hybrid premium' - I bet you can get ever 'premium' dollar back these days!
That is probably part of it too. I also saw a couple of articles saying that although the higher price of gas was originally paying off the hybrid premium faster now that supply of hybrids has tightened rising prices mean that that is no longer the case.
Reported US sales of hybrids in May 2008 declined 20% from May 2007 to 35,943 units. This drop is largely, but not solely, due to a 37% drop in sales of the Prius to 15,011 units in May 2008 from 24,009 units in May 2007. Toyota characterized the decline as due to “limited availability”
They are not selling any SLOWER. In fact, 17 hours on the lot is the latest info on how long Priuses last at dealerships. One dealer had 5 arrive and they were all sold almost immediately.
I'm not sure Saturn is laughing all the way to the bank on their hybrids:
The Saturn VUE Greenline Hybrid sold 340 units, representing 4.1% of total VUE sales. The Saturn Aura sold 36 units, representing 0.7% of total Aura sales. For the calendar year through the end of May, GM has sold 3,227 hybrid vehicles.
So Honda sold 1,400 more HCHs in May than GM has sold in all their hybrids ALL YEAR.
They are not selling any SLOWER. In fact, 17 hours on the lot is the latest info on how long Priuses last at dealerships. One dealer had 5 arrive and they were all sold almost immediately.
Are you saying that Toyota not keeping up with demand is a good thing?
I would go along with the shortage of batteries. You know they probably had to replace a lot :P and did not have enough to keep up with building new hybrids. Whatever the issue sounds like Toyota is not doing very well at planning. Too many PU trucks not enough hybrids. Are they getting managers from GM since losing their US talent?
Not a good thing at all. I would say, since we all know what great planners 'Yota has on staff, that it was an "unavoidable shortage."
Nice joke on the "had to replace a lot" thing - that almost got by me......you are a FUNNY MAN Gary !!!
Remember: Toyota wanted to be in the truck market for a lot of years. As well as their hybrid planning turned out to be, their Tundra planning seems to have been a little bit lacking !!!
And how many "good managers" have they lost now? One?
Perhaps health insurance premiums should be increased for those who ride bikes to work to cut down on gasoline/car use.
Perhaps health insurance premiums should be increased for those who do NOT ride bikes to work and thus have to deal with higher rates of obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and all the other health consequences that plague our lethargic society.
EVERYBODY including Toyota was blindsided by the spike in gas prices, to wit.
Every year in each of the 4 quarters there is a 'thrust' month towards which all the sales in that quarter are directed. First Qtr it's March 2nd Qtr it's May 3rd Qtr it's August 4th Qtr it's December
The peak advertising, inventorying, selling and buying are done in these 4 months.
The Prius in 2007 had sales of about 181,000 units ( 76,000 units through May 07 ).
Everything was going normally this year until April when fuel spiked to $3.50 and then $4.00 and beyond. They buying public didn't wait until the 'thrust month' of May to go out and buy their Prius'....they went early....in April.
........... April ...... May ......YTD 2007 .. 13100 ... 24000 ... 76700 2008 .. 21700 ... 15000 ... 79700
Nothing really amiss except that the May rush arrived in April and bought up every Prius in the country. Toyota did lose about 10-12 days of sales by not having inventory on hand for the May thrust month buyers but that's a risk of running a just-in-time system.
Regarding the cost on Honda's behalf to sell the Insight at a loss, there's something to keep in mind. Even from the very last year of Insight production, the technology and costs of hybrid construction has improved greatly. I'm sure at this point in time, if Honda wanted to, a new Insight could be built for a profit. Why they're doing it? Who knows? :confuse: Maybe they have something on the 'ol chalkboard. Beyond that, there's no real excuse. The greatest challenge of the Insight architecture, IMO, was getting all the hybrid technology in a relatively small body - which they had already accomplished.
If they can hybridize the Civic, they could probably hybridize the Fit, which is as good as Insight in that regard. Beyond that, give us the Insight already. People have begun to look past their vanity to save some serious cash in terms of fuel costs on their next car purchase.
I seriously doubt the Fit will give the Mileage of the Insight. First the super light aluminum body will not fly in a high production money making car. I doubt the Fit is close to the aerodynamics of the Insight. Insight was a test bench for Honda and served its purpose well. They were hard to sell sitting for long periods of time in the early years. Same as the original Prius. Too goofy looking and we had cheap gas.
From the Senate hearings last month. Shell President Hofmeister is speaking... The U.S. has enormous oil shale resources, too, that, when the technology to extract it is mature, may provide a very significant boost to domestic energy supply. According to Rand Corporation, the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, ranges from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels, of which between 500 billion and 1.1 trillion barrels are recoverable. According to Rand, “the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.” The U.S. has more oil locked in shale than any other country on Earth but impediments exist to accessing and developing this resource.
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all onshore federal lands are off-limits to oil and gas development with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it – it is a long list. If I may, I offer it today, if you would like to include it in the record.
As we have increased imports to meet our domestic energy needs, a new concept of “resource nationalism” is emerging in resource-rich nations around the world. This concept has changed the dynamics of global energy development. Thirty years ago, national oil companies owned by or affiliated with governments were either non-existent or small players. Today, these national oil companies own as much as 90 percent of the proven oil reserves in the world, while investor-owned oil companies – some of which are here today – hold just six percent of proven reserves. In 2006, the U.S. imported 3.7 billion barrels of oil to meet domestic demand, which is more than seven times the amount imported in 1970. The United States is the only country in the world that restricts the use of its own energy resources while transferring trillions of dollars of wealth to other countries in order to import energy.
local weather lately not conducive to biking as a commute method: tornado at my house May 11 tornados all over east side of indy 2 fridays ago, 200 apartments destroyed 80 mph straight winds all over central indiana 2 fridays ago 12 telephone poles down in a row along Indiana rt 9 no power at my house for 39 hrs on weekend after east side tornados 74 mph straight winds last friday at 4PM on day after new roof put on because of tornado 41 counties declared disaster areas from flooding 2 days ago I-70 and I-65 both closed last saturday from flooding and washouts 91 and humid yesterday, 92 last sunday torrential downpours again today Golf ball size hail today 10 miles east of my house 4000 homeowners lost everything in the flooding s. of indy this past weekend Wisconsin and Iowa have even worse flooding Water is up to the tops of stop signs in downtown Iowa City. 60-70 mph cross winds on way home last friday with 4 inches of water in entire road and 10 feet visibility due to rain intensity
I just crunched the numbers for the 3.7 billion barrells of oil imported per your post in 2006. It comes out at a barrel per month, for each of America's 300,000,000 population. For my family of 4 thats 4 barrels a month. Then we use 6 more barrels of domestic sourced oil per month since imports are only 40% of total consumption. Thats a barrel every 3 days used by my family. 121 barrels a year. Imagine all that stacked in my driveway. It would be 4 rows of 15 barrels long by 2 barrels high and one more left over. At 136 dollars a barrell, that's $16456 of oil my family is using. Only thing is we don't bike or even own a 4 cyl car. We have one V8 and several v6's. we are probably above average consumers of oil, so $16456 might be too low of an estimate. As a country at todays prices it equals $5 trillion dollars a year for oil. This all seems high to me. I wonder if 3.7 Billion is a lie?
It isn't...the military uses a disproportionately significant number, as do shipping and freight companies. Then you have to figure in transit concerns, including school district transportation.
I think that may be just crude oil imports. We buy refined products from several countries including the UK. Our total consumption is about 21 million barrels per day. That adds up to about 8 billion barrels per year. As was pointed out we have some high volume users. The airlines, trucking, ships and military. We are just light users comparatively speaking.
That is why I correctly called it ''provincialized' ownership, which means the province owns the oil not the oil companies. Canada under Prime Minister Trudeau unsuccessfully tried to have a National Energy program which was ahead of its time now looking back, but Alberta would not stand for it, and so they made sure their laws covered who owns that oil. That said yes the investment from Chevron, Shell etc do mine the oil from the tar sands and refine it, and are making billions doing it and reselling it back to us at $4+a US gallon. That is true, they came in with the initial investment, but the province still gets a cut of those profits no matter what in the form of direct taxation of oil profits and the income taxes from the jobs they have created. I know this is short term thinking, I give it 100 golden years. But this means Alberta has been able to have no provincial taxes for over 30 years now and has greatly increased the living standard in Canada. Now with this influx of investment, Alberta is the shining star in Canada's crown, whereas Ontario and Quebec having depended on the automotive industry for years and are in big trouble with over a million people in the last 3 years on unemployment. These very same people have flocked to Alberta only to find $100K per year jobs working in those tar sands and other direct and indirect industries. No one doubts Canada is getting raped legally, they just don't want to stop investment flowing in so that Canada can develop other technologies that will help it survive and prosper the next 200 years without stepping on any of the US industrialist territory which is a super powerful oligarchy that owns the parliament in Ottawa of course. I see Canada doing better right now than the States thanks to the States help. Now lets work on getting the States back to the position it should be in compared to our Chinese friends who will sink this economy either by super low paid workers or by buying all the oil, and US debt up then switching to the Euro as its main currency and sinking this country. We cannot let that happen. Canada is benefitting the US indirectly with all its resources flowing cheaply here to allow the US to prosper also. The US has set the standards and we should think of a way to surpass the Chinese so their standards come up to ours, we have come too far. We should not regress to the Chinese system and impoverish our nation due to the Global Economy. We have to compete and work smart not hard, utilize our technology and leverage our man power. Bring back the industries such as the automotive here and make electric cars,hydrogen cell cars that are US made by US companies and US people. Keeping the jobs here will make us rich. On another note if Chevron, Shell etc ever pulled out due to government involvement, Petro Canada, BP(English owned) and others will gladly step in with other Canadian run operations and just take over selling high priced Canadian gas to everyone:) So Chevron and Shell would stand to lose if they did not comply with the Alberta government, so who runs the show? The Alberta government. Shell and Chevron don't own the oil, they are only leasing it so to speak for massive profits, but so is the Albertan government. It is a vicious circle. Thank god the people there benefit, at least there is some justice in the world, Albertans 'good on you mates!!'
Comments
That will put Obama in the double risk category. He smokes cigarettes and rides a bike.
Stanley Wang, 67, of the 500 block of Sentinel Road, was traveling east on Main Street around 12:20 p.m. when the driver of a parked Dodge Dakota pick-up truck opened his door. Wang struck the door and was knocked him from his bike into the street.
Wang was then struck by a passing Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Kellie Gifford, 19, of the 100 block of Winthrop Avenue.
Wang, the former general counsel of Comcast, was taken to Kennedy Memorial Hospital - Cherry Hill, where he was pronounced dead at 1:08 p.m.
Did you see this article?
Sears tower algae microbus
If some inner city kids can make enough biodiesel to drive into downtown Chicago and back in their classroom I think the technology is a GO.
In defense of dead bicyclist, he was in the "right" according to the "Rules of the Road" in my state. It says: "After parking and before opening vehicle doors, a motorist should first check for bicyclists".
Wonder if the former general counsel was riding to work in his current job to save on gasoline or was just out pleasure riding.
Seems like bicyclists have extra difficulty these days in anticipating driver's doors suddenly opening on them, given the amount of vehicles with tinted/shaded glass. Bikers can't see if a driver inside or not.
Not to blame anyone - it was his time to go. But as a bike rider, you need to be concerned with every possible danger and take precautions against it.
Personally, I would never ride at speed on a shared roadway alongside a row of cars in which any door could open at any time and whack me out into the vehicle traffic flow.
That's why they are called ACCIDENTS however - no one sees them coming and usually the knowledge to prevent them comes in afterthought.
I am sure we will read a lot more about bike & motor scooter accidents as people scramble for ways to beat the high price of gas. For someone that has ridden many years it is less of a hazard than the guy that out of desperation starts riding a bike to work.
Not to blame anyone - it was his time to go. But as a bike rider, you need to be concerned with every possible danger and take precautions against it.
The driver of pickup truck was careless and maybe will be found at fault depending upon Rules of Road of state involved.
This incident an example of why bike riders using regular roads, not bike paths, to go to work or for pleasure should pay surcharge on their health care premium
If the 67-year old was going to work trying to save gasoline money, was that not penny-wise, pound foolish.
Would have been entirely different outcome if 67-year old were in a car and properly belted up. Fortunes might have been reversed with pickup driver having some type of injury and 67-year old maybe shaken and perhaps bruised from air-bags.
If this biker got flung out into traffic though, I'd tend to believe that the second scenario is what happened. Seems to me that if you open the door and the biker hits you, most likely they're going to hit the inside part of the door and just crumple, right then and there. Unless they try to swerve, out into traffic.
Like most accidents though, usually there's enough fault to go around. Even if someone does get held accountable, usually everybody had some part in causing that accident. The guy on the bike should have been more aware of his surroundings, the guy in the pickup should have looked before opening his door, and the girl in the Cavalier, upon overtaking a biker, should have been more cautious.
That's just true for careless drivers. When I'm in my car, I personally look for anything I might run into. As all smart people should do.
On my bike, I usually get a dirty look from car drivers who see me "too late" at an intersection, as if they think it's MY FAULT that they did not see me in time !!!
Safety is EVERYONE'S responsibility. Car drivers who cause accidents with bikers and bikers who cause the accidents with cars ought to both be punished equally.
I almost took a peloton out one day when I first moved to Boise but I checked my rear view mirror just before popping the door open. Biking is big here.
Counter the occasional accident and death against the souls getting healthier by bike riding, and the health insurance premiums are more likely to fall.
No one noticed that Exxon/Mobile is getting out of the retail gas selling business?
1) First and foremost they can be used as weapons as anything that emits energy could. They would be viewed as potential space-weapons by the international communty. And it would be tempting to anyone who had these, to make their target on Earth adjustable. You don't think the Pentagon would want to embed software in there to adjust their aim in a few seconds?
2) If there is an error, or a minor collision with space junk, the aim of the solar satellite might be knocked off. Maybe you set a city on fire, in a few seconds before it is shutdown?
So no I don't see large solar satellites beaming energy back to earth. It looks good from a theoretical standpoint in an innocent world, but not in reality.
Haven't seen it in the news, and I just checked my news RSS feeds. I also find it a bit hard to believe, as a full 50% of the gas stations in my area, if not more, are Mobil.
Exxon to exit retail gas business: reports (Reuters)
Exxon dumping retail stations; says no money in selling gas (USA Today)
There are 12,000 independent Exxon stations - Exxon owns another 2,200 stations. You'll still get to buy their gas since the brands aren't going anywhere.
Of the 2,200 company owned stations, you know a lot of them in marginal locations or highly competitive markets won't get sold, at least not for gas stations.
One gas station that closed last year near town now is a storefront for scooter sales.
Most like scenario is that they will be abandoned or converted over to "no-name" outlets that sell subpar fuel that consists of a 50/50 mixture of kerosene and water with rocks, sticks, and bugs in it.
Then I took a look on craigslist, in my region of 7 million people there was not ONE Insight for sale.
Saw a really nice one in a parking lot the other day though, all tricked out in red with these really nice (and not too big, in fact they may have been the same size as stock) black and red rims.
I would make the trade if I could find one with a stick and A/C, with around 60K miles. Problem is, so few were sold.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
The only one I would even consider because it is a 2006 with low miles has a high bid of 24,000 dollars. :surprise: That is about 5,000 dollars more then the MSRP of a manual Insight when new.
They are not selling any SLOWER. In fact, 17 hours on the lot is the latest info on how long Priuses last at dealerships. One dealer had 5 arrive and they were all sold almost immediately.
I'm not sure Saturn is laughing all the way to the bank on their hybrids:
The Saturn VUE Greenline Hybrid sold 340 units, representing 4.1% of total VUE sales. The Saturn Aura sold 36 units, representing 0.7% of total Aura sales. For the calendar year through the end of May, GM has sold 3,227 hybrid vehicles.
So Honda sold 1,400 more HCHs in May than GM has sold in all their hybrids ALL YEAR.
Are you saying that Toyota not keeping up with demand is a good thing?
I would go along with the shortage of batteries. You know they probably had to replace a lot :P and did not have enough to keep up with building new hybrids. Whatever the issue sounds like Toyota is not doing very well at planning. Too many PU trucks not enough hybrids. Are they getting managers from GM since losing their US talent?
Nice joke on the "had to replace a lot" thing - that almost got by me......you are a FUNNY MAN Gary !!!
Remember: Toyota wanted to be in the truck market for a lot of years. As well as their hybrid planning turned out to be, their Tundra planning seems to have been a little bit lacking !!!
And how many "good managers" have they lost now? One?
Perhaps health insurance premiums should be increased for those who do NOT ride bikes to work and thus have to deal with higher rates of obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and all the other health consequences that plague our lethargic society.
No its what is earned by everyone under one roof. there are many one income households and many one person households.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Every year in each of the 4 quarters there is a 'thrust' month towards which all the sales in that quarter are directed.
First Qtr it's March
2nd Qtr it's May
3rd Qtr it's August
4th Qtr it's December
The peak advertising, inventorying, selling and buying are done in these 4 months.
The Prius in 2007 had sales of about 181,000 units ( 76,000 units through May 07 ).
Everything was going normally this year until April when fuel spiked to $3.50 and then $4.00 and beyond. They buying public didn't wait until the 'thrust month' of May to go out and buy their Prius'....they went early....in April.
........... April ...... May ......YTD
2007 .. 13100 ... 24000 ... 76700
2008 .. 21700 ... 15000 ... 79700
Nothing really amiss except that the May rush arrived in April and bought up every Prius in the country. Toyota did lose about 10-12 days of sales by not having inventory on hand for the May thrust month buyers but that's a risk of running a just-in-time system.
If they can hybridize the Civic, they could probably hybridize the Fit, which is as good as Insight in that regard. Beyond that, give us the Insight already. People have begun to look past their vanity to save some serious cash in terms of fuel costs on their next car purchase.
We're waiting, Honda...
Next year.
http://automobiles.honda.com/news/press-releases-article.aspx?Category=Future%20- Models%20%26%20Concepts&Article=4510
The U.S. has enormous oil shale resources, too, that, when the technology to
extract it is mature, may provide a very significant boost to domestic energy
supply. According to Rand Corporation, the oil resource in place within the
Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah and
Wyoming, ranges from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels, of which between 500
billion and 1.1 trillion barrels are recoverable. According to Rand, “the
midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the
proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.” The U.S. has more oil locked in shale
than any other country on Earth but impediments exist to accessing and
developing this resource.
According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all onshore
federal lands are off-limits to oil and gas development with restrictions
applying to 92 percent of all federal lands.
The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40
specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas
projects. I urge you to review it – it is a long list. If I may, I offer it today, if
you would like to include it in the record.
As we have increased imports to meet our domestic energy needs, a new
concept of “resource nationalism” is emerging in resource-rich nations
around the world. This concept has changed the dynamics of global energy
development. Thirty years ago, national oil companies owned by or
affiliated with governments were either non-existent or small players.
Today, these national oil companies own as much as 90 percent of the
proven oil reserves in the world, while investor-owned oil companies – some
of which are here today – hold just six percent of proven reserves.
In 2006, the U.S. imported 3.7 billion barrels of oil to meet domestic
demand, which is more than seven times the amount imported in 1970. The
United States is the only country in the world that restricts the use of its own
energy resources while transferring trillions of dollars of wealth to other
countries in order to import energy.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/08-05-21John_Hofmeister_Testimony.pdf
tornado at my house May 11
tornados all over east side of indy 2 fridays ago, 200 apartments destroyed
80 mph straight winds all over central indiana 2 fridays ago
12 telephone poles down in a row along Indiana rt 9
no power at my house for 39 hrs on weekend after east side tornados
74 mph straight winds last friday at 4PM on day after new roof put on because of tornado
41 counties declared disaster areas from flooding 2 days ago
I-70 and I-65 both closed last saturday from flooding and washouts
91 and humid yesterday, 92 last sunday
torrential downpours again today
Golf ball size hail today 10 miles east of my house
4000 homeowners lost everything in the flooding s. of indy this past weekend
Wisconsin and Iowa have even worse flooding
Water is up to the tops of stop signs in downtown Iowa City.
60-70 mph cross winds on way home last friday with 4 inches of water in entire road and 10 feet visibility due to rain intensity
It comes out at a barrel per month, for each of America's 300,000,000 population. For my family of 4 thats 4 barrels a month. Then we use 6 more barrels of domestic sourced oil per month since imports are only 40% of total consumption. Thats a barrel every 3 days used by my family. 121 barrels a year. Imagine all that stacked in my driveway. It would be 4 rows of 15 barrels long by 2 barrels high and one more left over. At 136 dollars a barrell, that's $16456 of oil my family is using. Only thing is we don't bike or even own a 4 cyl car. We have one V8 and several v6's. we are probably above average consumers of oil, so $16456 might be too low of an estimate. As a country at todays prices it equals $5 trillion dollars a year for oil. This all seems high to me. I wonder if 3.7 Billion is a lie?
I think that may be just crude oil imports. We buy refined products from several countries including the UK. Our total consumption is about 21 million barrels per day. That adds up to about 8 billion barrels per year. As was pointed out we have some high volume users. The airlines, trucking, ships and military. We are just light users comparatively speaking.
On another note if Chevron, Shell etc ever pulled out due to government involvement, Petro Canada, BP(English owned) and others will gladly step in with other Canadian run operations and just take over selling high priced Canadian gas to everyone:) So Chevron and Shell would stand to lose if they did not comply with the Alberta government, so who runs the show? The Alberta government. Shell and Chevron don't own the oil, they are only leasing it so to speak for massive profits, but so is the Albertan government. It is a vicious circle. Thank god the people there benefit, at least there is some justice in the world, Albertans 'good on you mates!!'
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed that gas was up.
RUG is up to another record, $4.073.