How are the high energy prices effecting you?

[sgpwayne]

Hi Sam, No I don't have any proof other than what my experiences have brought me. I drove gas and chemical trucks for almost 37 years and learned quite a bit about the petroleum products business. I would imagine that it wouldn't be so very hard , in the internet age, to verify it. A couple of other things you might consider ( 1 ) fill your vehicle in the AM if at all posssible. the gas will have sat overnight, and any water or sediment will have fallen to the bottom, and it also will be denser. meaning that you are going to get more volume for your dollar. ( 2 ) Don't ever fill your vehicle if there is a gas truck dumping product. This causes the gas to mix with whatever else might be in the storage tank. Gas drivers are supposed to check for contaminants before they unload. mostly this is a check for water but sediment and sludge also show up. There is always going to be the unscrupulos station owner that uses heat to expand the volume of the gas so when it cools, the product condenses and the water will eventually fall to the bottom of the tank. On a personal note, I use whatever brand is available to me when I need gas. I have never had a problem with the quality of gas. If you read the owners manual of any vehicle it will tell you to use a specific grade of gas not a particular brand. On the other hand , it does state that brake fluid, and transmission fluid be of a certain brand or at least a brand that meets all of the mfg,s specs. My personal favorite was AM/PM, but lately I have been using Safeway, because I can get a .10 per gallon
discount with my Safeway card. I have no idea who manufactures the gas that Safeway uses in their stations. I do know that AM/PM uses gas that was mfg'd in their own refineries and delivered by dedicated trucks. My wife uses only Shell in her car, and that is her choice. She feels secure with only that brand in her tank. Shell, Chevron and Texaco are owned by the same corporation, now do you really think that the corporation is going to be running 3 different refineries in the same area. If your buddies feel more secure, by buying the high-priced stuff, its their choice. I am not trying to change anybody's mind only answering the question that was asked. WAYNE

[Marc Martyn]

Wayne-
I have heard that Safeway and other "discount" gasolines do not have cleaning additives in them. These additives help keep the injectors clean.
What do you know about this?

[sgpwayne]

I can't say for sure, what I do know for sure is that the major gas refiners supply the gasoline for the outlets like Costco, 7-11, Circle K and most of the other major outlets. Even the mo-gas and the jet fuel for the military and their respective BX orPX stations get their gas from the major refiners. It comes out of the same tanks, and filling platforms that supply the major gas stations. It seems to me that if a particular brand of gas did not have additives it would effect the smog control features of the computer based cars, because the injectors and other fuel control features would not be operating properly. That said, please be aware that this is my experience and I am in no way an expert on the subject. WAYNE

[raffensg64]

In 25 years of driving, I've never used anything except regular unleaded in any of my vehicles. I figured if it ain't broke, don't fix it! My 92 Ranger was at 172,000 miles when I lost it to an accident in 2001. My Cherokee Sport is at 165,000 miles right now. My 2002 Ranger is at 70,000 miles. None of these vehicles have/had experienced any fuel related problems in their combined 400,000 miles. Most fuel was of your everyday variety, ie Texaco, Conoco, Chevron, Shell, etc., but often times I used discount fuel from truck stops and BXs/PXs without issues.

I think the standards and regulations that are in place are working, although I do hear of an occasional case of contamination, most likely occurring after leaving the refinery.

[Dave]

I drive 60 miles a day 4 days a week to work. My vehicle gets 20 mpg. In Stanwood, WA the cheapest for regular is 3.07 per gallon at the moment with a .45 cent fee unless you go in and pre-pay which I don’t do. Although I hate paying this much for fuel, I think we all recognize we haven’t much choice if we choose to drive ourselves instead of car pooling or taking community transit. I just try to accept it and keep on going. I’m more conscious when it comes to driving and we try to make one trip per week into town for groceries and what ever else we need for the coming week. But other than that we try to drive only when we need to. It takes the freedom of doing what ever you like away. I love to wake up early on one of my days off and just load my lake boat and head to a local lake which for me is usually about 40 to 60 miles one way. I don’t do that when gas is so expensive. That’s one of the bummers that comes with fuel being so expensive. I guess we all just wait till it goes down again..

[littleriver]

Turns out that there are some interesting things going on in spokane in regard to this energy price thing.

Company named "Commuter Cars Corp" is building what appears to be a very viable electric car. First models are being built for retail prices varying from $108k to $148k. George Clooney is already using one of the first prototypes and the ones now being built are going to people like the founder of Google.

Here are some macro numbers that can give everyone some perspective on what electric cars could possibly achieve.


In the united states we use about 18 million barrels a day of crude oil and that refines out to roughly 9 million barrels of gasoline. A barrel of crude oil is 55 gallons but a barrel of gasoline is only 40 gallons. This is a very large chunk of the 80 or 90 million barrels of crude consumed daily world wide.

About 70% of the gasoline consumed in this country every day is used to commute back and forth to work.

Commuter Cars Corp is definitely on the right path. Their vehicle is just slightly wider than a goldwing motorbike so two of them will fit in a typical urban auto lane.

Here's the potential of this kind of vehicle. By converting from coal and fossil fuel to nuclear for generating electricity and if urban areas eventually require all vehicles on their streets to be a maximum of 4 feet wide you will be able to double the traffic flow on the streets and totally eliminate carbon and nitrogen emmissions. This could ultimately make our urban areas smog free, quiet, and much nicer places to live. It could also drop our gasoline consumption down into the 5 million gallon per day range.


It going to take a while though. And even if we drop our gas comsumption by 3 or 4 million barrels a day there are lots of other countries like China and India where consumption will continue rising sharply even if they also embrace the electric car technologies.

Regardless, it's nice to know that someone from washington state is doing something positive to resolve this issue.

[leahcim_dahc]

I am all for finding alternatives to fossil fuel consumption...but $108K-$148K isn't really going to appeal to the majority of the general population. Until something like that can be mass produced and sold at a reasonable cost...it's just going to be a fad or status symbol to those with those with an income well (and I mean WELL) above the national average of around $48K.

It is a start...but needs to be more realistic before it can become something that an everyday, ordinary person could think about affording.


Chad

[littleriver]

leah.... this is very typical for first run models of new technology...

A $100k starting price at this stage means they'll be running in the
$15k to $20k range once they can get some volume.

there's another company down in california that is much better capitalized that's
doing the same thing. What that means is the "component" side of the business is starting
to evolve.

Automobile manufacturers (toyota, ford, chevrolet, etc.) haven't built their product from rolled steel, electrical wire, connectors, and rubber for many, many decades. The way manufacturing works these days is the procurement people purchase "components" that are simply assembled to form the final product.

When you are working new technologies you have a very limited number of components you can purchase so you end up making many things from scratch. This is extremely expensive. However, once you establish the kinds of components you need for manufacturing the product you begin working the various suppliers to see what they can offer once you give them the technical specs.

Generally the bids sort of go like this...


If you order 10 of the major components they might cost $2,000 a piece.

If you order 100 the price might drop to $1,000 a piece.

If you order 1,000 the price drops to $400 or something like that.



but don't get too impatient. it's probably going to be several years before large volumes of these electric cars will be pouring out of the factories and sold for less than $20k retail. But there is at least hope that something is happening in this area because I think this is going to be the way to go.

[A9]

Let's hope this model doesn't get recalled like GM did with it's EV1 model....

[EastsideRedneck]

Just because the car is only as wide as a Goldwing does not mean two will be permitted to occupy one lane. I normally commute on one of my motorcycles to work, and I will tell you first hand that you do not want to be that close to someone else at highway speeds for longer than you have to. Unless that electric car weighs a ton its going to be subject to forces beyond the users control moreso than a traditional dino-fueled car.

Cars like these only cater to those who view their vehicle as merely a way to get from point "A" to "B". I, for one, am definitely not one of these people. Until they successfully design and manufacture electric vehicles capable of satisfying those who use them for more sporting pursuits there will never be a demand great enough to bring prices down to a more pedestrian range. The thought of ultra-quiet cars everywhere is unnerving to me (maybe I'll have to put cards on their spokes.) When Big Bro starts deciding what I should drive to work/play is the day I expatriate.

[littleriver]

These are definitely good points ER. You've obviously pondered this issue a little.

Narrow cars have lots of problems, not the least being that they are going to tip over very easily.

But the world's energy equation is changing in a very fundamental way right now. From the early 80s until the present the Saudi's have always managed their production and reserves to keep the price reasonable so it didn't hurt western economies. They understood that if the Western economies went into recession then it wouldn't really matter how much oil they had they were going to go in to recession also. Also, the saudis have always understood that if they let the price of oil get too high that it would encourage investment in alternatives that really work like nuclear and syn-crude from coal and other carbonacious kinds of deposits and bio-fuels. In fact, I've always suspected that some Saudi oil money found it's way to help fund the anti-nuclear activists in the 1980s. I used to read summaries of opec meeting minutes from time to time back then and ol shiek Yamani was very much aware of the kind of competition nuclear energy could pose to his products and his economy.

The OPEC press release that hit the airwaves this morning says that the Saudi's aren't going to do this anymore. I'm not sure why but if they don't back down then this represents a very fundamental change in what's going on. Fortunately we seem to be well on our way toward revitalizing the nuclear option and there's even a big shiny new biofuel plant being built in Eastern Washington. As I recall this plant is going to cost 40 million or so to finish and the country singer Willie Nelson has put up a bunch of the capital needed to make it happen. A good friend, who's father has some irrigated acreage on the east side, says they are even experimenting with growing peanuts over there because peanuts produce more oil per acre than other options like soybeans, and sunflowers and canola. In regard to soybeans, I've run the numbers on that option and as long as the price of gas and diesel stays above $2 a gallon it's an economically viable business. If our nation's farmers end up bumping up production and solving the problem and making a whole bunch of money in the process I think that would be a very good thing but it's going to be several years before they can really ramp up in any significant way.

Even further out, these narrow electric cars could very well become ubiquitous in the next decade or so. I wouldn't feel comfortable driving one unless it was in an urban environment where the "rules of the road" were that everyone else has to be driving them (or something like them) also. That's not going to happen with gasoline at $3 a gallon, but if it pops up to $6 or $7 then just about anything becomes possible. And if the saudi's hold firm to what was in the press release this morning then we will definitely see $4 gas by next summer. If there are any unexpected disruptions in the crude supply and distribution network that supplies our refineries it's even possible we could be staring at $5 a gallon. Some pundits are already predicting that crude will go to $150 a barrel next year and that translates to gasoline at about $6 a gallon. Necessity is the mother of all invention and with the price of gas at $6 a gallon current dollar value it's going to be very necessary for some of us to find other transportation options.

It's getting very ugly out there.