Gas Prices Hit Another Record High

We’re going to send you on your way for the weekend with the cheery news that the national average price of regular unleaded gasoline has hit a big $3.30/gallon. This is the highest average ever, even with inflation factored in — and let’s face it, inflation isn’t a small thing, either.

Analysts predict prices will go even higher in the next few weeks. The Energy Department is expecting them to peak at $3.50 later this spring before falling back down. Others say the even-bigger $4 mark is on the way for summer.

Gasoline prices rise to a record $3.30 and head higher (USA Today)

Comments

Our Prius traveled 364 miles on 7.7 gallons this week (more than half the miles in heavy city traffic), and that helps to take the edge off these higher prices. Thanks to Toyota and Mr. Watanabe for doing what other people didn't think was possible.

47MPG on a Prius?
My conventional engine powered Civic got 38.1 running around the city.
I bet I could hypermile that Prius more than 47MPG.

It is ridiculous how high prices have become - over here in the UK unleaded prices have reached £5 a gallon in many areas.

J, there are some driving techniques that can help the Prius do better, but they tend to irritate the drivers behind you, so I use them sparingly. Oddly, we can easily hit 55 mpg on the highway with no special efforts. I'm just happy to get 47 mpg in a northern state where spring hasn't quite arrived yet(we still have some snow around). When the weather warms up, I usually average around 50. I salute your Civic's mpg - you must time the lights right, and not use the brakes much.

Trainer,
Nice to hear some response from fellow fuel conserving drivers.
I am also in the northern states, but Spring just arrived like last week. This summer is going to be her first summer after breaking in, so I should post some higher numbers than that.
Anyway, I have no problem getting the driver behind me irritated. He/she can either cut me off, or run into my tailend if they want to burn their money that badly.
You are right about how I time the lights. When you are on the same route everyday 5 days a week, you could time it easily without using the brakes much.

Trainer - what an assh0le comment that was. Thanks to Toy and Mr. Wannabe for "doing what others didn't think was possible??" First off, you might as well get down on your knees and worship Toy judging from the way you are talking. Secondly, considering that Toy spend $100 million on advertising the Prius, I can assure you that Toy's mission here wasn't to do the impossible, but to capitalize on the whole GREEN movement. Clearly it worked because now people view Toy as ultra-eco-friendly so when they go buy that Tundra, they feel like they are doing the right thing for the environment.

Back to the Prius, well of course you got decent mileage in heavy city traffic. The way the car works is by using regenerative brake power so when you use the brakes it recharges the battery. If you had been driving on the highway on the other hand, not only would you be doing so in a slow, sluggish, cheese-wedge shaped car, but you also would get poor gas mileage. Either way, I am happy that you are helping save the environment by driving 350+ miles in heavy traffic with your exciting Prius. Too bad it took way more energy to transport your Prius from Japan, over the Pacific, and to your local California port than you will ever save by driving it :]

Commodore, he's still getting waaay better gas mileage than you in your domestic truck... so suck it, and enjoy your $3.50 gas.

Happymeals - I don't know what made you think I drive a domestic truck...I actually recently bought a black DI CTS. O, and gas where I live is actually closer to $3

A friend of mine said something interesting to me about the Prius on Thursday. He said, "what about those of us who have families". Unless you don't know, there are still people out there who have children (or at least more than 2). So what do we drive then? Since our third is on the way, my wife and I are thinking about trading her old BMW 3er for a Lambda. But I don't see anything wrong with the Tahoe Hybrids either (besides their price lol). My point here is that the Prius isn't God's answer to climate change. There are other options out there. And you didn't even address my point on how much energy it takes to bring the Prius here from Japan not to mention the fact that it doesn't get us off that $3.50 gas you mentioned because..well..it still uses GAS. You guys need to be more open to things such as the Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid, coming in just over a year, which don't come from Japan and which can get you around for a day most of the time just by charging it up (assuming it has a 40 miles range).

Commode,
The topic of the posting is the high price of gasoline, and I am grateful to Toyota for having the courage to build a design that actually saves gas, and that believe it or not, GM was first experimenting with in the 1960s. Apparently a lot of Prius owners feel the same way I do - Consumer Reports rates it as the number one owner satisfaction vehicle, with 93 percent saying they would buy another one -no Cadillac comes close. So live and let live and try to stay more positive. When you get tired of your Cimmaron, test drive a Prius - you might like it. All you have to do is read the British chap's comments above to realize we should all be happy we're not paying $10 per gallon - yet. The more people that drive Civic Hybrids, Highlander Hybrids, Tahoe Hybrids, and Prius hybrids, the longer we can hold off that day in this country.

Trainer - by no stretch of the imagination I am being pessimistic so there is no need to tell me to be more "positive". I am simply being realistic. If you tried that, you would see the huge contradiction in your last post when you say that this hybrid bullsh!t is keeping us away from $10 a gallon gas. Well these cars USE gasoline! Even the Tahoe hybrid which has a near 50% improvement in fuel economy still only gets as much MPG as a Cobalt. The reality of the situation here is that we need to look beyond hybrids. We need to stop getting down on our knees thanking Toy for building this eye sore that is the Prius. If it was solar powered, plug-in, etc it would be fine, but as it is now the Prius is nothing more than a meaningless symbol for treehuggers to show off that they are 'GREEN'. They, nor you, have still not addressed the fact that the Prius is simply another gasoline-powered vehicle that uses more energy to get here from Japan than you would ever save by driving it. And I haven't even mentioned yet how harmful the 100s of pounds of batteries that the Prius carries are to the environment once they are disposed. And how did you address this? By citing the most biased magazine - CR - which states that people are satisfied with their cheese-wedge shaped car. Well of course they are...I suppose it does its job of letting whoever is driving behind them know that they are treehuggers and that their favorite movie is "An Inconvenient Truth". But can't they just slap a "Al Gore in 2008" sticker on the back of their Camry and achieve the same effect? Well that reminds me, CR (yes, Consumer Reports) recently admitted all of the reliability issues of the Camry and Tundra. So it's good that you mentioned the Cimmaron (a classic 10-year old example used by import-humpers to prove imports are better than domestics). Look at the Cimmaron and then see how it has morphed into the first CTS, and now the all-new CTS which even the most biased magazines can't help but praise. It is just a testament to how far domestic manufacturers have come.

I just wanted to ask you this: Being as committed to the environment as you are, Trainer, would you consider buying the Saturn Vue plug-in or the Chevy Volt when they come out in a few years?

Commodore,
I wholeheartedly support plug-in hybrids like the upcoming Chevrolet Volt, and I applaud GM for developing it. By offsetting oil use with locally generated electricity we will send fewer dollars to countries who are not our friends. The hybrids on the market now also accomplish the same thing by reducing gasoline use, plus they do put downward pressure on the price of gasoline. Without the shift to hybrids and smaller vehicles, along with changes in driving habits, gasoline would likely be as expensive as diesel fuel - the professionals who use that can't cut their use when the price goes up, and it's really hurting the truckers. You seem to minimize the benefit of the Tahoe hybrid, but in reality when a vehicle that normally gets 10 or 11 mpg average goes to 21, it can save 600 gallons of gasoline per year - enough to run a Prius for two years. I don't think GM would be doing all this good stuff without the competition from Toyota, so everybody wins, right?

First off, the Tahoe for 2008 (with the tougher standards) is rated at 14/20 MPG according to Yahoo Autos, so you drastically understated its number. Other than than, your statement about a Prius being able to run on 600 gallons of fuel saved by a Tahoe hybrid is true.

But secondly, back to where you are wrong. I am pleased that you are open to American products like the Volt and VUE Plug in, but you don't seem to understand why I support them much more than the stupid Prius. I do exactly the opposite of what you do with kneeling down and thanking Toy for this car because they released this car for the wrong reasons. Simply put, they did it to market themselves as a GREEN car company like I said and to increase the perception of their company as a whole. GM is not motivated by Toy to build more efficient cars, that "motivation" mostly comes from CAFE standards. But back to the problem. By producing a car like the Prius, which to some degree influences other automakers from Porshe to GMC to make hybrids, Toy is getting us stuck in this transitional period. They spend hundreds of million to advertise this car (and Hybrids as a whole) so now people like you and the American public are thinking that hybrids are amazing and the solution to this issue. In fact they are not. They are, at best, a transitional technology. But because they have been advertised as the solution to eco-problems their demand is ever increasing. Instead of looking to more effective ways to get away from gasoline, we simply use a little less. But guess what? More and more cars are on the road every year. If anything, our demand is still increasing, just slightly less than it would have without God's (I mean, Toy's) gift to us that is hybrids. I mean, come on, the EV-1 is a better solution to this issue than the Prius.

Commodore

You seem to harp on the idea that Toyota released the Prius to make themselves appear green. They didn't. They released it to make money, whether by appearing green or just by giving a car that is possibly the most efficient gasoline vehicle produced right now. There is nothing stupid about it. If Toyota is so successful at marketing efficiency why doesn't GM follow? You talk about the energy used to bring a car to the US from overseas, do you know how much energy that takes? What difference does that make? Are you saying that American car companies don't use as much energy to get their vehicles to market? Maybe this does use more energy at the beginning but in the long run does it add up? I doubt it. And what about the batteries do you know how they are made or how they are disposed of? I have no information on this, so if you have a source I would like to see it. The fact that Chevy is coming out with the Volt (someday hopefully) and Toyota is coming out with a Prius (again couldn't be soon enough) shows that no one is trying to get stuck in a transitional period. GM spends just as much promoting its vehicles that are hybrids. Both companies are just trying to meet consumer demand.

And I believe if you search in this years news archives you will find that gasoline demand actually did not go up for the first time since the 70's. Anyway to do that is welcome by me, and I really don't care about the company doing it whenever all they are concerned about is money themselves.

I thought that ugly little Honda car had the best gas mileage - you know that little car with the rear wheels covered - they don't make them anymore but didn't they get amazing gas mileage?

Anyway, my point of bringing it up is not to start a brand war but to point out that the reason the Prius took off and not that Honda was because the Honda was around when gas prices were tollerable. The Prius just happened to come out at the right time when gas prices sky rocketed. I guess a Prius would be okay for a commuter car but I couldn't use it for my family car.

Bottom line for me is that Toyota is interested in making money, just like all the other car companies. They advertise the Prius like crazy to sell the car and make money - and they play the green environmentally friendly card because that is what consumers are looking for right now - that is what sells. My concern is what happens to the batteries when they die, and I'm sure someday they will. How do they dispose of them or do they recycle them? Are they a fire hazzard? How much does it cost if the car is fine but you have to replace the batteries? And the price - I can't see spending all that money on a dinky little car. If I'm paying all the money in gas on my current vehicle or a car payment and a little in gas on a Prius, I wouldn't really be saving anything.

sczech - they released it to make money? I think they are smart enough to know that there is no way for them to make money directly from Prius sales. They LOSE money on every sale, until recently when they sold enough to break even. So no, selling the Prius was not about making money from it. INDIRECTLY however you may have a point. The Prius is the most brilliant advertising by a car company in a long time - they made the whole Toy lineup look good and most likely increasing sales so yes they made money in that way. But in that case, it just proves my point that Toy made this car to make themselves look green...obviously for business reasons.

As for gasoline demand decreasing - don't just send me on a hunt to prove what you are saying. Give me a link to that article or whatever. Then I will do the same with the batteries and other things for which you asked for sources.

Our goal should not be to make gas demand lower - that is impossible. It should be, in my opinion, to make ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, etc. available ALONGSIDE gasoline at as many gas stations as possible. And that is not reaching far, just replace some pumps with ethanol

Toyota actually made a profit off the Prius in terms of production costs vs sales. Yes they did just recently break even in terms of recouping all of their R & D costs. Ethanol and biodiesel are not the answer. Ethanol is too costly to produce, it raises the cost of food and cow feed and has to be subsidized the gov't in order to produce it. If you used all US farmland for ethanol you could only produce 5% of the total US fuel consumption.Definately not a viable solution. Hydrogen could be a solution, 50 years from now. Right now the only viable solutions are electric, hybrid and the combination. The technology is there so that 50% of all vehicles could be at that technology within the next 20 years.
BTW - lowering demand will not lower the price at the pump. Oil company execs make bonus' base on profit so they will want to keep profit levels about where they're at now.

Commodore,

Again I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are flat wrong. A car company is not going to produce a car like the Prius in the numbers they did if it doesn't make money. I can see it in a limited production car, but this is the second generation, and a third is on the way. It is not about the entire lineup, come on. They make I don't know, 7 SUV's. And why would someone buy a Prius other than to have hybrid. I don't believe people say I am going to buy a Toyota SUV because they make the Prius. They may buy that Toyota for other reasons though.

And here is an article about demand dropping this summer:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080407/us_nm/usa_eia_gasoline_dc

And a quote from the article below says that:

And last week, the Energy Information Administration said gasoline inventories fell more than expected during the week ended March 28. Gasoline demand rose for the first time since January, raising the prospect that supplies will fall further as Americans drive more during the spring and summer.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080407/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices_30

I don't see why you would think lowering demand is impossible. That is probably the best thing that can be done right now. The only problem with the declining demand is that it is happening only because gas costs so much, it is screwing with the US economy, in a bad way. And I totally agree with the above post, Oil company execs control the price of gas, and that is the straight and narrow on that.

One more thing on the Prius - L,

L you had stated above that the Honda was around when gas prices were tolerable but the Prius came out at the right time. The Prius was around at the same time, it was just the first generation. And while that car was in the compact class the new car fits in the midsize class. The same class as a Accord or Camry. I don't know what size family you have, but if you can get the hybrid tax rebate for one of these cars it would offset some of the initial costs that go into buying one. But I agree with you, that would only be good if you were looking for a new car.

The Prius is not a marketing gimmick or a money loser. 180,000 were sold in the U.S. last year alone, and sales are up in 2008. More than a million have been sold worldwide.
Commodore's repeated criticisms of the Prius don't compute when he seems to be interested in saving gasoline. He holds up the Chevy Volt as the real innovation, without mentioning that it too will burn gasoline after the first 40 miles (it's a plug-in HYBRID, not a pure EV). He touts his CTS, a nice car that gets only 16 mpg in the city - that's about a dollar's worth of gas burned every five miles, compared to a dollar's worth burned for every 15 miles for the Prius, which happens to have about the same size interior as the CTS. He calls the Prius a transitional technology. I call it a car that works, and I call any car that gets 16 mpg in the city a potentially endangered species in the not too distant world of $4 gasoline. Once again, I thank Toyota and Mr. Watanabe for building the Prius and doing what other people didn't think was possible.

I too am grateful for Toyota's Prius innovation of a fuel efficient car. My 2003 Prius has gotten 52.3 MPG for my 50,000 miles including cross country trips to Kansas, DC, Kentucky, North and South Carolina. My highway mileage is 52-54 MPG all day long and I have no problem with traffic. Bought used, it has over 100,000 miles and is working great.

My Prius is about paying today the same amount for gas that I used to pay in January 2001. I'm getting the same miles and don't have to choose between gas and dinner.

What is really funny is I've learned how to rebuild my traction battery modules for about $5 each. The engine, steering, wheels and transmission will wear out before I'll ever have to worry about replacing the battery. The new Prius batteries are even better and last longer.

As for the environment, we in Alabama don't care. Last year we learned the bass and catfish in Bear Creek have too much mercury for kids and pregnant women to eat. But they join a growing list of game we can catch and kill but eating might kill us.

Now I looked carefully through my papers but I haven't seen one bill for shipping my Prius from Japan to the USA. But we've learned that making up stuff about the Prius and hybrids is a strange insanity. You wonder if some of that "Clean Skies" mercury that poisoned Bear Creek is impacting those who continue to assert false, anti-hybrid claims. But you know, it really doesn't matter.

Every week or so, they go to the fuel pump and it reaches into their pockets and robs them blind. They do it week after week while spouting anti-hybrid nonsense. "Mad as a Hatter" comes to mind. Thankfully, they won't be buying hybrids so the prices will remain reasonable.

Bob Wilson

Wow, I'm currently getting 55 mpg. This winter I was averageing 41 and thought this is ok I can live with it. Since the weather has warmed up into the 60-70 range, what a difference. I assume that the warmer weather and companies not adding ethanol or whatever the additive of the month is, has definitly added to my gas mileage. I have also learned how to drive differently to maximize the mileage.