So, clearly the refineiries, in support of our oil friendly administration, did their part by lowering gas prices. They still had record profits. Washington sits on their hands when there’s a run-up, though.

I notice no one is talking about where the Iraqi oil is going. Wanna take a bet where? And wanna bet it’s real cheap?

Lessee…plenty of oil. Predictions of $4/gal. Mobil, Exxon, Dutch Petro, BP….all of them are priming the pump for the runnup. Buy your oil and gas stocks now because you’re in for one hell of a ride.

Until someone curbs these refining bastards, they give any excuse to raise prices. And like lemmings, we accept them at face value. With cars like the Tesla, hybrids, fuel cells, all within reach in about 5 years, their greedy little hands will get smacked. That doesn’t absolve them from the here and now, however.

Regarding gas prices in Europe, you guys have no oil natural resources. Sorry about your luck, but that’s why you pay what you pay. If you’re so upset about it, I’m sure some Saudi Prince would be more than happy to buy the UK. Then you can have all the cheap fuel you want.

Oh year, sorry to those who don’t like trucks. But, the U.S. is the only place where they are feasible to own. If you don’t like them, may I suggest Japan as the place you’d like to live. Their “flats” are no bigger than a Camry.

europerspective – When the English clean up their crummy teeth, Americans will lose weight.

he can get rid of your weedeater and lawnmower and issue you a goat to take care of your lawn. a goat will feed itsself and requires no gas (you can save gas too by not picking up hookers, you now have a goat)

he can issue you a hobby like stamp collecting in odrer to get rid of your dirtbikes,quads,jet skis,waverunners boats and model airplanes.

he can bolt your fireplace shut, the burning of wood is uncontrolled and unmonitered, who know the amount of greenhouse gasses released (al gore does)

he can tell you to buy a house based on the size of your family, a single person gets an apartment, and a family of 5 gets a 1 bedroom house, body heat can keep it warm saving electricity.

everybody is on house arrest until you get a pass explaining why you need to go somewhere other than work or the grocery store. other than to make a living or buy food there is no reason to burn gas.

and finally he can tell us to become vegetarian, eliminating the need to burn gas to cook meat.

with the al gore plan he wont have to worry about the energy it takes to heat his mansion or be driven around in his expedition, you save it all for him.

Actually, a Prius comfortably seats 4, 5 in a pinch. Please amend your calculations. Also, as you said how many Escalade drivers do you see with 8 people? Minivans carry 8 more regularly than SUVs do. I rarely carried more than 2 or 3 people in my two Land Cruisers; most of the space was taken up by gear for camping or other activities.

1. Prohibitively tax blink rims. This will elliminate all guys from buying SUVs and pickups for impractical reasons.

2. Tax soccer games practices. This will prohibit moms from buying SUVs too.

It all depends on what you’re doing.

Then again, how many people transport 8 people in their Escalades everyday.

Doesn’t anybody realize that gasoline is made from oil… it doesn’t magically appear at the pump.

And because it’s a manufactured (refined) product, it has to be made somewhere. Somewhere like a friggin’ refinery.

And if we don’t have enough gasoline with all our refineries going full-blast… then we need more refineries to make enough gasoline to meet our needs.

Pretty basic, right?

Not to our government and our EPA. They’ve done nearly everything to make it nigh impossible to build more refineries.

So we can’t make enough gasoline for everyone. Thus the price goes up.

(The price of oil does factor in, but not as much as our lack of production ability.)

…

Frickin’ idiots, our government… that is.

Strangely that makes a bit of sense, how much I don’t know but it does. Back in the day, it was not hard to find anything with four wheels with a trailer hitch. Mostly large cars though, given if it wasn’t a truck.

It is fairly common knowledge that most cars with a similarly powerful engine to a truck will go somewhere between 15-30% further on a gallon of gas than that truck or SUV. Given this adding a degree of tow-worthiness to a car to haul around the occasional grass pallet or big screen TV, or what have you, would be a very good idea.

Certainly you wouldn’t be towing horses or enough material to build a house, but then if you did have that need, go buy a truck.

However Get Real has a point as well. but his POV ignores that people Towing with cars has been done and is still largely done since the 1950’s but you’d be hard pressed to find anything to fit the bill now. GM killed the B-body, FORD’s Panther is over 30 years old, and DCX’s LX platform is not outfitted for that kind of duty.

It wouldn’t be hard to build a properly reinforced car frame that can handle occasional towing but given desires of carmakers to sell trucks in this country, this seems unlikely unless car-tow people speak out.

That said there are other factors that keep people buying trucks and most of them are the fault of those buyers themselves. But slapping a “proof of need” and stiffer gas-guzzler taxes on more Trucks and SUVs (actually at all as the case may be) would at least dent the sells of the wasteful behemoths. Not likely to happen – it infringes on one’s freedom.

So where my freedom not to have to pay $4.00 for a gallon of gas because every other chump out there bought a Full-sized Truck or SUV driving up demand and thusly price? Where’s my freedom not to be half blinded by every truck and SUV whose drivers don’t notice they have their high-beams on, or got those “ultra-brights” meant for off-road use? Where’s my freedom not to have to be stuck behind those rolling blindspots only to find out the jackass was twenty car-lengths behind the next guy and never know it?

I’ll say this once, I hate Truck and SUVs. Freedom? Freedom without responsibility is not freedom. It’s anarchy. The only thing saving us from that is the Law… and that is being eroded every day.

My ‘95 Grand Marquis is rated for over 5K pounds. Today an ‘06 GM rates about 2K pounds.

Carmakers make you buy the profit filled truck for towing.

Cars in the 50’s – 70’s towed everything.

They had big frames and engines, not tin-can bodies and sewing machine engines.

* No competition to gain market share.
* No incentive to pass along efficiencies.
* No incentive to add capacity.
* No incentive to develop new products & resources.

When we truly have a shortage and pump prices rise, oil companies should have increased cost of the raw crude oil. Their profits should be squeezed in a competitive market, not expanded. This shows competition is not there.

As far as fuel efficiency, as the real price of petrol rises the market (& related products) will fix itself. When we run out I guarantee alternative fuels and ideas will be there. It’s just like power windmills in the 80’s. Low natural gas prices killed them. As it should, the market worked! In the future the trend will reverse.

We all need one of these big time.

They do have efficiency kits that you are talking about. They operate by hydrolyzing water, and using the hydrogen to make a car run on much leaner fuel mixtures without an decrease in power. They can also operate in the winter by adding alchohol to the mixture.

There is no decrease in power, because a hydrogen flame front spreads faster than just a purely petrol flame front. This allows them to run much leaner mixtures and save on gas.

Some kits will work on cars as new as 2003. What they do is release hydrogen in the air intakee, and have hydrogen concentration sensors fool the oxygen sensors. So, the more hydrogen in the air intake, the more the hydrogen sensors wil tell the oxygen sensors that there is less oxygen in the intake. The ECU of the car will then adjust the fuel mixture accordingly, by lowering the amount of fuel injected into the cylinder to compensate for the “lower” oxygen levels.

So, no modifying of the stock components, just placing an additional component to the already stock system.

I’ll have to dig up the car company, but they were getting 1990-2000 car models with over 60 mpg ratings, some of them over 80.

Bottom line… We are at the mercy of the oil companies & the GOV.

MUJICIAN I hear what you are saying, but public transportation here in San Diego, CA sucks ass. Plus I wouldn’t want to live close to my work because it isn’t in the nicest part of town. Fortunately I drive against traffic which really makes a huge difference in fuel comsumption.

You can always spot an American woman outside of America; because she’s usually the obese one.