spot on and another reason heaped on the pile of why I'll vote for Obama in the fall. hell even if it's a write in.

this though

will work in some places. but many parts of America aren't set up for this. I think it'd be great if American cities were built on a more European model that allowed for easy mass transit and working within the community, but unfortunately this isn't the case.
Many major American cities don't even have really effective or reliable bus systems, much less subway or rail. America is a commuter country and it's going to take a lot to change that.

Took me a while to locate this report (too many damn RSS feeds in my inbox). Ernst and Young in conjunction with the Urban Land Institute have published a report, which says in part:

Key trends we all need to be aware of as it relates to transportation:

- as we congregate in fewer, larger, sunbelt urban areas, we must be aware that we are also increasing the amount of transportation volume and subsequent infrastructure costs on a smaller number of already overburdened metropolitan areas. You may see it as being stuck in traffic, while planners see it as ever-increasing costs for maintenance and renewal

- current trends are actually putting more power (read money) into national or federal plans as local transportation projects take a back seat to larger infrastructure issues

- spending on infrastructure as a percentage of GDP has actually declined over the last 30 years.

Infrastructure as percentage of GDP

Here is a good article that examines the impact of gas prices and summer travel, at least to the amount of summer travel. Most economists (like krugman) just assume gas pricing is inelastic. The first articles suggest that is no longer the case. The second also makes the same case. These are part of the gas tax story, even if lord wonderful barack says otherwise.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3207029&page=1

http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2008/02/24/gas_costs_forcing_drivers_to_cut_back/

Okay. Now try to understand that your point completely irrelevant to the gas tax holiday. Just try to wrap you brain around that.

A gas tax holiday will not be of any significant benefit to the average American consumer. In Ancient Rome the concept was called "Bread and Circuses." Distract the proletariat with entertainment and bread. I am going to go out on a limb here and risk upsetting all of the true believers.

The modern version of "Bread and Circuses" would involve concentrating on what some drunken celebrity is doing or nonsense political campaigns between three clowns that do not care anything about you or the American public.

If you think there is any REAL difference between McCain, Clinton or Obama then you are seriously deluding yourself. They goal, their ONLY goal is to be in power. Over the last 30 years there has been much talk about many real and important issues.

Health Care
Social Security
Energy/Oil consumption
National Defense/Security
Illegal Immigration
The War of the Moment (Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, etc.

The list can go on and on. During that time none of these issues have been seriously addressed. What did the US Senate spend time on in the recent past? The possible use of steroids by Major League baseball players to name one thing that jumps to mind. Give me a break. Democrats and Republicans spend their time demonizing each other and do absolutely nothing to solve the problem. I will most likely vote for Obama in this election based on a slim hope that he will actually do something to benefit the country, but I have very little faith that he will succeed even if he is so inclined.

As far as alternative fuel sources, better mileage, etc. the technology is there. We do not need to suffer with high gas prices if the proper governmental agencies would get off of their dead butts and release the necessary technology. But wait! That would mean that the flow of money to the bank accounts of robber oil barons and crooked politicians would end. We must, by any means necessary, struggle to pay high gas prices so they can have their million dollar homes and champagne/caviar lifestyles.

http://www.befreetech.com/suppressed_inventions.htm
http://storage.testpad.net/byronwine/
http://home.earthlink.net/~walterx9/Env/300MPG.html
http://www.runyourcarwithwater.com/?hop=snexis

I have probably pissed some people off who think I am now crazy or some sort of conspiracy theorist, but wait and see. If I am wrong I will apologize to everyone after the next Presidents term of office.

Christ on a crutch.

There is no 200 mpg carburetor, never was, never will be. Carbs mix fuel and air. That's it. They do not and cannot add energy to fuel nor increase the efficiency of an engine. To suggest otherwise is contrary to the laws of physics and betrays a woeful ignorance of how engines actually work.

Cracking hydrogen from water is possible but takes a tremendous amount of power in order to produce any volume or pressure of gas. Water is extremely stable - it is made of hydrogen and oxygen but is used to put out fires, remember? All those "run your car on water" devices produce a tiny amount of hydrogen, not nearly enough to make any significant difference to fuel economy, let alone actually run the engine on the produced hydrogen. Yo suggest otherwise again runs afoul of basic science and the laws of chemistry.

Your link from england forgets that Imperial gallons are 20% larger than US gallons so English MPG will be around 20% higher than the identical car sold here. The Civic VX was the high-mileage unit referred to with VTEC-E, which was EPA rated for 48 city / 55 hwy by the older and more optimistic EPA rating system. Also note that the English test method was not the same as the US EPA method.

some good hippie shit.

http://www.solazyme.com/

yeah, I got that. What I was pointing out was that it would take a significant change in American culture and city planning to make that mandate broad enough and apply to enough people to really be effective in reducing our gas use. Something I'd really like to see. American city planning has been generally craptastic for most of the last century.

also we have to address that a large amount of fuel consumption comes from commercial transport.

This is kind of crazy

link

If the price of petrol goes (even more) nuts over that 3 years, couldn't that really hurt Chrysler? Can they afford this as it is? It says in the article that they're already looking at cutting jobs.

Also, I notice that the Chrysler chairman is painting the proposed gas tax holiday as a less than great idea, because it will make people worry less about their fuel consumption and the miles they're driving... how is this Chrysler charge card going to make people worry more about those things more?

Yeah, I don't see how this will work out well for them.

Makes the PT Cruiser look like a decent idea/

FTR -


That's cheaper than the rebates they were giving out for the last few years.

here's their chart for how many total gallons they cover per model

If you bought a Caliber (good mileage), used the entire allotment and gas stayed at $4/gal (it's $3.40/g here in NJ) for regular you'd save a maximum of $1600 over three years.

That's the low end of the scale.

At the top end of the scale, if you bought a one ton diesel pickup and bought $5/gal diesel in California ( $4.40 now) you'd save $4,800 over 3 years.

If gas rose 1$/gal over those figures, the savings would increase to $3100 for the Caliber and $7200 for the Ram 3500 pickup.

By way of comparison, when I bought my turbodiesel Dodge pickup in 2005, I got $8,000 off the sticker price and zero percent financing over three years - about $10,000 off total.

So, this is a decent deal if you're a pessimist and believe gas prices will go a bunch higher, particularly if you really need something big and thirsty. The worse gas prices get, the better deal it is.

On the other hand, if you get something with really good mileage you'd save a heap of money as well.

The Prius will get about 48mpg, using 750 gallons of gas over the same 36,000 miles. At $4/gal, that = $3,000 vs. the $4500 you'll spend on the price-controlled $3 gas Chrysler is covering.

Expanding that out to 108,000 miles, and staying at $4/gal the Prius will cost you $9,000 in fuel while the Caliber will cost you $4500 for the covered fuel then another $12,000 after the program expires for a total of $16,500 in fuel.

At 5$/gal, the prius will cost $3750 in fuel, the Caliber $19,500 (4500+15000)... no bargain there, and the longer you keep the car and the more you drive, the worse it gets for the Chryslers.

Also, this program runs less than a month so it isn't likely to cause them major financial pain in the future.

I can't add anything that probably hasn't been said before, so I'll just state my "Kindergarten Libertarian" position, that being the there really shouldn't be any taxes OR subsidies for the oil industry. I will raise a point I've heard else where, and that's the goverment does have a some what contradictory energy policy (like taxes and subidies of the same industry, or trying to decrease the cost of oil while preventing drilling in place like the ANWAR, and more explotation of local oil supplies).

Seems too good to be true?

It is.