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Gasoline isn’t expensive, it just costs more than some people can afford.
I saw this coming last year when Biden got elected. In July 2021, I sold my boat and new truck, both for significantly more than I paid for both. I ordered a Prius Prime and got it for under sticker.
Best of both worlds. 35 mile EV range which is 95% of my driving. When I switch over to gas, I get 55mpg.
Cannot afford it? What's so wrong with carpooling ("ride sharing"?). I traveled once to a place where folks of modest means who were lucky enough to have a car would pick up strangers along the way in exchange for some small amount of money to defray their fuel cost. I even got a couple such rides myself.
In these days of suburbs, where it's not unusual for a couple to work in two completely different directions, or neighbors for that matter, carpooling is less of an answer.
The entirety of the US is built around suburbs and commuting.
All this talk about electric cars is all bullshit.
Save_Ukraine says@socal2
Which model did you get?
I got a Model Y dual motor. Ordered it back in August and it arrived in January. The thing is a spaceship! The speed, acceleration, torque, regenerative breaking (especially the regen breaking!), infotainment/audio system, autopilot (didn't get FSD). Can't imagine the acceleration in the Performance model let alone the Plaid, it is already crazy fast for a mid-range model.
All American car made by a company with a non-woke CEO like Musk.
There is a dude that drives a Prius in my neighborhood that has a bumper sticker saying:
"Nice Prius!"
"Said no one....."
@socal, congrats! It’s a fun car to drive. Hope you got it before all the price increases.
If it weren’t for the tri-motor Cybertruck, I would have ordered the Plaid. Can’t take anything with us when we’re gone. Might as well enjoy life without breaking the bank. YOLO!
already saw a few Rivians driving around.
I had an accrual for the replacement battery cost that I amortized over the warranty period. I reckoned, for the fuel savings compared to a Corolla (about the same size), I had "broken even" on battery vs fuel cost savings after about 100,000 miles, this was after about ten years driving.
President Biden recently said “it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”
I figure the fact checkers likely won’t touch this one, so I did the homework.
Biden’s claim isn’t true. I explain.
Just two weeks ago, Biden froze new drilling permits and stopped leases on federal lands because a court ruled that they couldn’t use an elevated “social cost of carbon” to make it more difficult to drill.
Instead, they shut the whole process down: nytimes.com/2022/02/20/clima…
Biden Administration Halts New Drilling in Legal Fight Over Climate Costs
The Interior Department is pausing new federal oil and gas leases and permits after a judge blocked the government from weighing the cost of climate damage in decisions.
nytimes.com
This opposition to domestic energy production isn’t new. When Biden first took office, he moved to ban new oil and gas leases on federal land (a huge slice of US energy) via executive order.
The measure was eventually stopped by the courts. nytimes.com/2021/01/25/clima…
Biden Sets in Motion Plan to Ban New Oil and Gas Leases on Federal Land (Published 2021)
The president will announce a suite of executive actions on Wednesday to combat climate change, two people familiar with his plans said, and will ask federal agencies to determine the extent of a...
nytimes.com
Back before gas prices hit record highs, Biden’s allies were praising the Admin for taking bold steps to limit fossil fuel production.
One of their key points? We, supposedly, already had enough supply “to meet domestic needs.”
nrdc.org/experts/joshua-axel…
Biden’s Fossil Fuel Leasing Pause Is Bold Climate Action
The moratorium on fossil fuel leasing is a key step in addressing the climate crisis.
nrdc.org
Biden also proposed ending a wide range of tax benefits for drilling and exploration, something supporters said would hopefully “discourage additional oil and gas development.”
This makes the process more expensive, particularly when competing with heavily subsidized renewables.
And I’m sure that no one has forgotten that Biden shutdown the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office.
But what you may have forgotten was that this was part of a broader suite of efforts to “reverse ‘more than 100’ Trump-era policies.” foxbusiness.com/economy/bide…
Taken together, these early moves represent what climate activist Bill McKibben said “may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era” arguing “they send a decisive signal about the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.” newyorker.com/news/daily-com…
In June of 2021, Biden suspended oil and gas leases that the Trump Admin had granted in Alaska, outraging local officials and ending one of the key actions Trump took to expand domestic energy production. apnews.com/article/alaska-ar…
Biden suspends oil leases in Alaska's Arctic refuge
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by the Trump administration and...
apnews.com
All of these federal efforts came with a clear goal in mind: sending a signal that the days of fossil fuels would be ending soon.
Again, once upon a time, the corporate press was comfortable admitting this was the goal:
time.com/5934090/joe-biden-c…
Biden's Biggest Climate Move: Signaling that Fossil Fuels Are Not the Future
Biden’s remarks communicated a sea change in how the U.S. government will approach global warming
time.com
These signals matter.
Extractive industries like oil & gas rely heavily on tea-leaf-reading, because even seemingly small gov’t actions can have huge impacts for a heavily regulated industry. A quick, easy-to-follow breakdown of some of the reasons here: investopedia.com/ask/answers…
How do government regulations impact the oil and gas drilling sector?
Find out how government regulation of the oil and gas sectors is often positive for the large companies, but may be negative for smaller operations.
investopedia.com
And it wasn’t just Biden acting on his own.
As @SaysSimonson wrote about for @FreeBeacon, Dems in Congress have pushed to restrict domestic energy production even as prices have climbed:
freebeacon.com/politics/how-…
How Dems Helped Spike Gas Prices - Washington Free Beacon
Despite reassurances from the White House that it is doing nothing to discourage oil companies from opening new drill sites, President Joe Biden's allies in Congress just months ago pressured oil...
freebeacon.com
Congressional Dems have also taken steps to add tighter (and in some cases, just punitive) regulations that make it harder for domestic energy companies to do business, including regs on offshore oil & regarding methane.
Naturally, making a process harder increases the cost.
And there were numerous hearings where Democrats have demonized the oil and gas industry in colorful but seriously dubious ways, making the industry’s standing on that side of the aisle clear.
Plus, something that gets left out of the current discourse is that numerous states have banned or proposed banning fracking, an effective way to access hard-to-reach energy sources.
I’ll give you one guess which politically party was behind these efforts.
Now, to be clear, the impacts of some of these efforts have been overblown.
Despite trying to ban new drilling on federal lands, lots of plans have moved forward to do so - more than under President Trump’s first year (largely b/c of Obama-era rules), but fewer than last year.
And it isn’t reasonable to blame Biden - or any president - exclusively for the price of oil and gas. The world is just more complicated than that.
Here’s a good primer on some of that complexity: npr.org/2021/11/14/105506858…
Gasoline prices are surging. Can Biden actually do something about it?
Presidents don't set the gas price you pay at the pump, but they're often blamed for it. And right now, high energy prices are helping send inflation to an over 30-year high.
npr.org
But it’s intellectually disingenuous for President Biden to pretend that he and his party haven’t taken action to make domestic energy production more difficult and, as a result, have made energy more expensive.
They’ve done a lot with the explicit goal of doing just that.
The inconvenient truth is that Biden campaigned on ambitious climate goals. Those aren’t likely to get done organically, so he and his administration have tried to apply pressure to traditional energy sources.
Now that prices have jumped, they’re trying to pretend otherwise.
Increased costs have always been a good-faith concern about climate efforts among lots of people, left, right and center.
Biden and his team ignored those warnings and helped make the bed they find themselves laying.
Rather than admit that, now they’re trying to memoryhole it.
There is a dude that drives a Prius in my neighborhood that has a bumper sticker saying:
"Nice Prius!"
"Said no one....."
I don't fill up often. Fuel gauge said 10 miles to go
I always thought it was bizarre to have a big battery for 35 miles of all-electric driving on a car that already got 50+ MPG. If gas were back at $2/gallon each diligent nightly charge is saving you a maximum of $1.40.
Diesel is over $6/gallon here in California — more than the so-called "high" octane gasoline (91 octane). I'm thinking this will be putting a squeeze on commercial ground transportation. I assume marine diesel and home heating oil is similarly high, too.
There's little debate about the collective noun for a group of the things. It's called a "smug." As in: "A see a smug of Priuses waiting at the Über pickup location."
I always thought it was bizarre to have a big battery for 35 miles of all-electric driving on a car that already got 50+ MPG.
I used to hate prius's, but ever since getting one, I have about it all the time. It's a brilliant car that's actually kinda fun to drive.
SunnyvaleCA saysDiesel is over $6/gallon here in California — more than the so-called "high" octane gasoline (91 octane). I'm thinking this will be putting a squeeze on commercial ground transportation. I assume marine diesel and home heating oil is similarly high, too.
Jet fuel too.
B.A.C.A.H. saysInteresting, 230,000 miles; how many years?
14
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