California Gas Prices

[John Lifer]

Mike, Your calculation is inaccurate as you stated you didn't need to calculate efficiency in producing electricity, but you did do that to produce the hydrogen. I'm not a proponent for Hydrogen, electric cars are not cost effective by any means.

Nothing wrong with gasoline, it IS artificially expensive. Gas taxes are NOT cheap.... If you take $3.00 gas (which is not historically cheap) we pay almost 9% for the federal tax, state taxes are all over the place, CA is .51 per gallon, that ends up being 25% of the cost of a gallon. What other items do you buy that you pay 25% of the price in taxes?

Don't forget you WILL pay this amount for any alternative fuel. Feds have to pay for our roads and bridges and any other items they can squeeze out of this tax. The one thing we in this country have forgotten over the past couple of decades is that there is NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH! Someone pays, or we all go broke.

[John Lifer]

The current lease offer here for the Volt is $299/month for 36 months with something like $3-4k down. Any tax rebate goes to the original owner. In the case of a lease, that first owner is the leasing company.

Sweet deal, and just what is this VOLT going to be worth at the end of the 36 month lease? I'll bet that these folks will be quite surprised that $40K car is now worth $10K.......

[Kevin W Johnson]

It's not how much oil we can get, it's how cheaply we can get it out of the ground. It IS cheap to get natural gas out of the ground, though.

Some is, some isn't. There's been a huge debate/fight about "fracking" in order to produce natural gas locally.

As for oil, the Gulf has essentially been shut down for new production, while we GIVE money to other countries to drill offshore. One on land oil field that we've told only contains a few million barrels, is actually said to hold more that 4 billion. IIRC the article said it wasn't difficult to tap. Even if it were, TODAYS price would pay for the work to do so, even if in the long term the price dropped.

A few years ago, the mere thought that we as a country would tap into more of our own oil would cause the OPEC nations to increase production, thereby reducing the cost, so we would keep buying their oil instead. Well, they watch our news too, they know the current "climate" against domestic production and all the hurdles that stand in the way. It will take the start of serious production to again produce that result.

As I said, it's an over-simplified answer to a complex problem. However, if it could be done, it would be the fastest way to move away from gasoline, while solving many other problems at the same time.

[Kevin W Johnson]

Sweet deal, and just what is this VOLT going to be worth at the end of the 36 month lease? I'll bet that these folks will be quite surprised that $40K car is now worth $10K.......

Where's the 10K number come from? Is a 3 yr old Prius only worth 10K?

[Mike Henderson]

Mike, Your calculation is inaccurate as you stated you didn't need to calculate efficiency in producing electricity, but you did do that to produce the hydrogen. I'm not a proponent for Hydrogen, electric cars are not cost effective by any means.

I was trying to compare the efficiency of a hydrogen system verses a battery system. In either case, for my example, you start with 1,000 energy units of electricity. If that electricity is produced from petroleum or solar power or whatever doesn't matter. Whatever the efficiency of producing the electricity, it does not change the efficiency of the follow-on systems (hydrogen or battery). Let's say that the electricity is produced from natural gas and the efficiency is 30% in converting the energy in natural gas to electrical energy. You'd just multiple each result by 0.30 so the relative comparisons would not change.

To produce hydrogen, you need to first produce electricity. To charge a battery, you first need to produce electricity. Same - same.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

Don't forget you WILL pay this amount for any alternative fuel. Feds have to pay for our roads and bridges and any other items they can squeeze out of this tax. The one thing we in this country have forgotten over the past couple of decades is that there is NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH! Someone pays, or we all go broke.

You bring up an interesting point, which is how do we collect road taxes for electric vehicles. Right now, there aren't enough electric vehicles to worry about but the states are already working on how to address this issue. The most likely approach is to charge by the mileage driven. You'd report the number of miles driven in a year and pay taxes when you file your state income tax.

The problem with this approach is that it does not distinguish between the use of a gas guzzler and a gas sipper. Under today's approach, where taxes are levied on the gas put into the vehicle, the owner of a gas guzzler pays a lot more taxes than the owner of a gas sipper. So the mileage approach will probably not work well. We'd prefer to incent people to purchase highly efficient vehicles.

Maybe the "taxes per mile" approach will only be used with electric vehicles.

Mike

[Gary Max]

Around here------- they have been watching the news and raised our gas 30 cents over night just so we don't feel left out.

[Rich Riddle]

Around here------- they have been watching the news and raised our gas 30 cents over night just so we don't feel left out.

In Northern Kentucky we only went up three cents from yesterday. Use the website GasBuddy to find the lowest gas prices in your area.

http://gasbuddy.com/

[Jason Roehl]

In Northern Kentucky we only went up three cents from yesterday. Use the website GasBuddy to find the lowest gas prices in your area.

http://gasbuddy.com/

They also have an app for smartphones--very useful. It uses the GPS on your device to find you the closest stations, or you can sort by price within a given distance.

[Brian Elfert]

Sweet deal, and just what is this VOLT going to be worth at the end of the 36 month lease? I'll bet that these folks will be quite surprised that $40K car is now worth $10K.......

The leasing company estimates how much the car will be worth at the end of the lease. They use this estimated value to help set the lease payments. If the car is worth less at the end of lease then estimated the leasing company takes the loss. The leasee is not responsible for the difference. Finance companies quit doing leases for the most part around 2000 because the cars were worth less than estimated at the end of the leases and they were losing money.

[David Weaver]

A co-worker of mine just leased a Volt. He pays almost $400 a month to lease it. (No idea if he gets a tax credit when leasing it.) He says he is spending a fair bit less than the car payment and fuel for his previous car. His commute is just under 40 miles so it is perfect for the Volt.

He is still on the first tank of gas after at least three months. His electric bill has gone up about $40 a month.

I wonder how much the lease would cost if the manufacturer/dealer didn't pocket a credit $7500 for selling the volt. I'm guessing it would be about $7500 more over the life of the lease, add $200 a month plus finance and the real lease cost of the car is $600 a month, it's just skewed because someone else's dime is handling the $200 difference.

It would be a lot more fiscally sound to purchase a cruze (but my oh my is there a huge spread in bragging rights between a cruze and volt), which probably could be leased for $200 without anyone else's dime.

Or a prius, which so far has proven to be a much better vehicle in terms of sales volume and practicality.

[Jason Roehl]

Never mind that the Volt is selling at about a 50% loss for GM. (They cost about $80k per to manufacture).

[David Weaver]

I think they make the cruze somewhere between you and I geographically, so I'd call it buying local

As well as inexpensive. (I'd get a prius if I was forced to take one of the 3, though, it makes fiscal sense and is already known to last a long time). I think I have seen exactly one volt so far on the road (I take public trans and see a lot of cars go by).

I stand next to a BP station to catch the bus, and it was going to the gas station. The odds of that can't be too great, see one in your life and it's going to a gas station.

[Jason Roehl]

I'd take whichever one had the highest trade-in value. Then I'd trade it in on a diesel Jetta or Passat.

[Kevin W Johnson]

Never mind that the Volt is selling at about a 50% loss for GM. (They cost about $80k per to manufacture).

Not true.... The article that says that took the total development cost and divided that by the number of Volts made thus far and then added the estimated production cost of the car...... just a bit unfair to say the least. Even if that were a true calculation of cost of manufacture, they left out the sisters to the Volt sold in Europe and Australia.

Then there's the fact that the Chevy Volt has the highest customer satisfaction ratings of any compact car, plug-in or not, according to J.D. Power.