What are gas prices in your area?

[Twilight Hue]

You're not going to suggest US commutes are longer than Australian ones, surely?

Nope.

 

[We Never Know]

Seems to me viable alternatives have been found.
They are just not popular with those who are making large amounts of profits with the current system.

That correct. Electric vehicles have been around for over 125 years but they lacked the power, distance and huge profits that comes with gas vehicles.

 

[McBell]

You're not going to suggest US commutes are longer than Australian ones, surely?

Personally, I have no idea.
I do know my wife puts just under 400 miles a week on her vehicle just going to and from work.
Though if there is an accident or road construction that number is higher.

How many miles do Australians put on their vehicles per week only driving to and from work?

 

[We Never Know]

Pretty much.
At least here in my neck of the woods you have gas and diesel and E85.
Not really sure what E85 is, but it screws up a gas engine really really good.
As to gas, well, it is everything that one puts in a vehicle that is not diesel or E85.
That is, fuel wise.
We still put oil and transmission fluid, etc in the vehicles as well....

E85 (or flex fuel) is a term that refers to high-level ethanol-gasoline blends containing 51% to 83% ethanol

 

[Stevicus]

What do you call gas?

An uncomfortable and often painful intestinal ailment.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You're not going to suggest US commutes are longer than Australian ones, surely?

If he doesn't, I will.

In Australia, the average commuting distance people travelled from their place of usual residence was 16.0 kilometres (km). Around 7.4 million people (or 73% of employed people over the age of 15 years) commuted a distance of less than 20 km to work.

2071.0.55.001 - Census of Population and Housing: Commuting to Work - More Stories from the Census, 2016

If you drive long distances to your job each day, you are not alone. According to ABC News, the average American drives 16 miles to work each way, with a daily commute totaling nearly an hour round trip.

How Far Do Americans Drive to Work on Average?

16 miles = 25.7 km

 

[ChristineM]

Unleaded, premium unleaded, ethanol, etc we call gas.

I meant cooking/heating gas, known here as town gas, north sea gas... Or bottled gas, propane / butain gas.


The gaseous stuff, not the liquid stuff, so that gas is still gas

 

[McBell]

That correct. Electric vehicles have been around for over 125 years but they lacked the power, distance and huge profits that comes with gas vehicles.

There are two main reasons I am not interested in an electric vehicle at this time.
The first being the cost.
Though that issue will soon be a non-issue.
The biggest issue is that you have to charge them.
And there are few, and I mean very few, places one can charge it here in my neck of the woods.

 

[We Never Know]

I meant cooking)heating gas, known here as town gas, north sea gas... Or bottles gas, propane / butain gas.


The gaseous stuff, not the liquid stuff, so that gas is still gas

Propane and natural gas.

 

[McBell]

E85 (or flex fuel) is a term that refers to high-level ethanol-gasoline blends containing 51% to 83% ethanol

All I know it is that it really really screws up a motor that is not set up to use it.

 

[McBell]

I meant cooking/heating gas, known here as town gas, north sea gas... Or bottled gas, propane / butain gas.


The gaseous stuff, not the liquid stuff, so that gas is still gas

where I am at they call Natural Gas gas and propane propane.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I meant cooking/heating gas, known here as town gas, north sea gas... Or bottled gas, propane / butain gas.


The gaseous stuff, not the liquid stuff, so that gas is still gas

We call heating gas "natural gas" here, which is different from propane (which we just call "propane").

 

[We Never Know]

There are two main reasons I am not interested in an electric vehicle at this time.
The first being the cost.
Though that issue will soon be a non-issue.
The biggest issue is that you have to charge them.
And there are few, and I mean very few, places one can charge it here in my neck of the woods.

I would assume when more are on the road, charging stations like gas stations will be made available at a cost. If i remember right, at current you can charge one for around the price of a gallon of gas. However it takes quite some time to charge one with and average of around 8 hours

 

[ChristineM]

There are two main reasons I am not interested in an electric vehicle at this time.
The first being the cost.
Though that issue will soon be a non-issue.
The biggest issue is that you have to charge them.
And there are few, and I mean very few, places one can charge it here in my neck of the woods.

We bought our twins a Citreon Ami, a small electric car that can be driven without a license. It is designed as a cheap town runabout. It will do up to 75km (45 miles) on a 2 hour charge at 45kph (a little under 30mph). We are fortunate that france is preparing for the electric revolution by installing charge points in ever town over 1000 inhabitants. And most supermarkets have installed free charge points in their car parks.


But damn,it is one ugly car

 

[Stevicus]

Part of the problem is that public transportation in a lot of North America is poor because of those land use decisions.

When you have a suburb full of those 3.3 acre McMansions, a few things happen:

- the density is so low that transit needs significant subsidy to be viable at all.

- routes end up being so long that a ridiculous number of buses are needed to maintain reasonable headways.

The magic number for transit headway is generally considered 5 minutes: if you know that you won't wait longer than 5 minutes for a bus, that's when you can use transit spontaneously for travel the way you would a car.

Imagine a bus route that's a 15 mile loop with an average speed of 30 mph (fairly typical for a North American suburban bus route, I'd say). To maintain 5 minute headways, you'd need at least 6 buses running on that route all the time.

... and that's just one route. Repeat this across a whole city and the costs get ridiculous, which is why in plenty of situations like this, they put only 1 bus on that route instead of 6, and riders have to wait half an hour for a bus.

Understandably, people don't want to wait 30 minutes in the rain or heat (and then another 30 minutes for their transfer), so they don't do it unless they have to.

In the areas of North America where transit has short headways and gets you where you want to go quickly (or at least as quick as a car), taking transit isn't seen as "low class."

I think it can vary from place to place. I've noticed a lot of people in the exurban areas may drive their cars to a nearby suburb, park their car in a park-and-ride lot, and then take the train into the city. It also saves the expense and aggravation of finding a parking place, which come at a premium in the larger cities. A car becomes more of a burden.

In places like NYC, taxis are quite popular. I think there are more taxis on the streets than regular cars. But that can be kind of expensive, so those who are on a budget might opt for the subway or bus (and even that's more expensive than the buses here in Tucson). And even here, whenever there's talk of a proposed fare increase, a lot of people oppose it, as it impacts on the poor, elderly, and disabled who can't afford cars.

 

[We Never Know]

All I know it is that it really really screws up a motor that is not set up to use it.

Back in the mid/late 70's my neighbour had a 4x4 truck that ran on propane and had all the power you wanted. I don"t remember how efficient it was though but remember him saying its was cheaper to run than regular gas.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There are two main reasons I am not interested in an electric vehicle at this time.
The first being the cost.
Though that issue will soon be a non-issue.
The biggest issue is that you have to charge them.
And there are few, and I mean very few, places one can charge it here in my neck of the woods.

I think this varies by location (and by brand of car).

A few years ago, they installed Tesla Superchargers up and down the 401 here in Ontario. You could comfortably drive your Tesla - but only a Tesla - from Detroit to Montreal without worrying about ever being far from a charging station.

I have some experience driving an electric car: at work, my department's vehicle is an all-electric Ford C-Max. Based on that experience, I would say that I could replace my current car with an electric car and have no change at all to my travel habits, even if I could only charge it at home overnight.

As it is, for any serious out-of-town trips, we use my wife's Flex as the "road trip" vehicle instead of my smaller car anyway, since the Flex holds more stuff and she can't drive stick (my car's manual).

We're starting to see more public charging stations and I've even been seeing a lot of apartment buildings that have at least rough-ins for charging stations in their resident parking areas, so I think you'll see it more and more viable for people to use an electric car as their main vehicle.

... and really, I think we're rapidly approaching the break-even point where, for most people, commuting with an electric car and renting a gas vehicle for the occasional long trip is going to be more cost-effective than driving a gas vehicle to work every day. For people with long commutes, they've probably already passed this break-even point.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Back in the mid/late 70's my neighbour had a 4x4 truck that ran on propane and had all the power you wanted. I don"t remember how efficient it was though but remember him saying its was cheaper to run than regular gas.

One of my classmates in university had a propane-fuelled pickup. He'd use it to go back and forth from school (in southern Ontario) to home (near Sault Ste Marie).

Anyone who's worried about finding a charging station for an electric car should definitely not drive a propane vehicle. Even then, he would always come back with stories of how sketchy it was trying to coast into the next refueling station on fumes... and since then, a lot of those gas stations have gotten rid of their propane vehicle refueling equipment.

 

[Twilight Hue]

You're probably right. However, fossil fuel is a finite resource.
So the question really is, how much damage will we do before we find a viable alternative?

That would depend on allowing innovation and invention to flourish like once before.

Over time it's my opinion people have been regulated out of the motivation for even trying alternatives and trying it out in real life.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I would assume when more are on the road, charging stations like gas stations will be made available at a cost. If i remember right, at current you can charge one for around the price of a gallon of gas. However it takes quite some time to charge one with and average of around 8 hours

Looking at municipalities that can even barely get their own electrical grid to work properly half the time, I can't even imagine what the immense increase in electrical load would do to the system including any modification.