cyclinfool

I feel sorry for those living on or near the poverty line - earning near minimum wage, no health insurance and no access to public transportation to get to work. We have options - they don't.

Kurt Erlenbach

Here's another thing to consider. Our military has become largely an oil-protection service, and a good chunk of the taxes we pay supports the military. If we were not so dependent on oil from unstable parts of the world, and so in need of assuring our continued access to the oil through military force, we could well be paying lower taxes (or at least not borrowing so much to create a spectacular deficit). You can add another dollar or two to a gallon of gas in hidden costs made up in taxes.

Feathers

expensive fuel doesn't help anything. increased delivery costs drives price of EVERYTHING higher.

Tom Bombadil

Told my wife yesterday that this was #1 on my list for our next car.

Problem is, they are only going to ship something like 2000-3000 of them to the USA over the next year.

guybierhaus

I'm holding out for this car.

Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range. Web page here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...s/4251491.html

Just wonder what the air compressor looks like to pump it back up. Or maybe it carries a long hose?

dauphin

neither did I!

oilman_15106

Before you jump on the deisel bandwagon consider this: deisel is $4.39 a gallon here is PA with the nations highest deisel taxes and gas is $3.69 so with a 19% difference in price you better get that much more mileage to make it worthwhile. The European deisel thing started for only one reason, to avoid the high taxes on gasoline while getting from point a to b. Not to save the earth.

I figure there is no cure for rude teenagers. Guess the middle finger salute will have to do until I come up with a better way to deal with it.

Johnny_Monkey

Diesel is more expensive than petrol here.

Retro Grouch 

Well consider this: All that obnoxious stuff they do is designed to grab your attention and piss you off. When you flip them the bird, you reward them by letting them know they were successful.

I think it's better to outsmart them which, fortunately, isn't difficult. Ignore them, do nothing, and they'll slink away.

Tom Bombadil

If I pay $4.39/gal for diesel and get 50 mpg, then that's 8.78 cents per mile.

If I pay $3.69/gal for gas and get 30 mpg, then that's 12.3 cents per mile.

Bring on the turbo diesels!

Monoborracho

Did you friend also predict the drop to $9.00 per barrel or so back in 1998? If he did, he's a wizard.

rustiewood@comc

it,s the price of diesel you should be concerned about,it RUNS this country!everthing in this country moves by truck like your food! there will be another oil bust.i got a brother whos in the oil business in texas,they know it,s gonna happen, just dont know when.speculators are the reason for the high price!

MikeLD

I was just in the UK last week ... it was a pound and 20 pence a liter ... works out to about 9 bucks a US gallon.

Retro Grouch 

Uh - So what was the price of crude oil before the Iraq invasion?

cyclinfool

I believe Diesel is a good short term solution. It has not been popular in the past because of the smell, the lack of acceleration and the polution. Most if not all of these problems have been fixed with the latest generation. Biodiesel as a fuel is much better than ethanol as it takes much less energy to make - ethanol (E85) is close to a looser. Diesel costs more for two primary reasons, there is less production capacity and road taxes are higher - the states know they can hit up diesel trucks on fuel taxes to pay for the roads, there are not enough to vote them out of office vs the gasoline drivers. We need to fix this too. Diesel fuel has more BTU/gallon than gasoline and diesel engines are more efficient due to higher compression and higher burn temperatures. It could easily reduce fuel consumption in this country if we switched over. It would not solve the problem but it would help.

malkin

Since the 1970s I've been looking forward to the day when bikes can take over the freeways!

cccorlew

Back in the old days when..... Hey you kids, get off my lawn.

I have more problems with old folks who can't drive worth beans and cell-phone-starbucks moms than I do with kids.

Bill Kapaun

TOTAL BULL!
Trucks with PUC permits do not pay state fuel tax!
No permit and it's the same tax/gal as gasoline.

Closed Office

I saw the tail end of on of the Discovery channel's 10 best lists, and this one was about tanks. It had the Abrahams tank at #2 which surprised me, and I decided to watch and see what was #1 now. It turned out that the small negative about the tank is that it uses a jet engine for power that takes 8 gallons of fuel to start and leaves it vulnerable to a heat seeking weapon up the rear stove pipe, although there was no suggestion that this has ever happened.

The #1 tank in their opinion was the German Leopard, which uses a common industrial engine. Common because it is good and easy to repair. It has been my experience that when efficiency is a concern, things tend to work out better. I think efficiency might even be one of those rare things, like understanding, that doesn't have a negative down side.

aqua4her

She said with a smile on her face, "Thanks! Those taxes also paid for my new bike."

maddmaxx 

The government taketh.........and the government giveth away.........for a relatively minor handling charge...............

Neil_B

+1. But then again, to paraphrase Ambrose Bierce, even when I was alone I was in bad company.

oilman_15106

Not true at all. Trucks with multistate registration pay state taxes prorated on the mileage traveled in those states. Trucks like mine which are registered to run in only one state pay it all when the fuel is purchased.

rustiewood@comc

federal tax is higher on diesel than gas,also the 2007 emission standers have a lot to with high diesel prices, because 90% of the sulfur has to be taken out. which now makes it more expensive, because it has to be processed more.the 2007 emission standards, were the beginning of high gas fuel prices!

cyclinfool

Hate to dispute you but...
A quote from the Energy Information Administration:

Until several years ago, the average price of diesel fuel was usually lower than the average price of gasoline. In some winters when the demand for distillate heating oil was high, the price of diesel fuel rose above the gasoline price. Since September 2004, the price of diesel fuel has been generally higher than the price of regular gasoline all year round for several reasons. Worldwide demand for diesel fuel and other distillate fuel oils has been increasing steadily, with strong demand in China, Europe, and the U.S., putting more pressure on the tight global refining capacity. In the U.S., the transition to low-sulfur diesel fuel has affected diesel fuel production and distribution costs. Also, the Federal excise tax on diesel fuel is 6 cents higher per gallon (24.4 cents per gallon) than the tax on gasoline.

Also check out the following on State fues taxes: https://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/gasol...-Tax-Rates.pdf In many states (not all) the Fuel tax is higher for Diesel and the combined state and federal tax is higher every where.

I stick by my thesis that converting to diesel will help give us a quick reduction in the growing demand for fuel but to make it viable we need to fix the tax issue and the refineing and distribution issue. We also need more biodiesel production from waste products such as spent cooking oils (BTW - there is a lot of info on running diesel cars on straight Veg oil - it's a good way to ruin a perfectly good engine and is against the law in many states, Biodiesel is a much better alternative).

Don't get me started on electric cars, hydrogen and hybrids - man what cruel jokes.