Sunday, June 8, 2008

Summer Gas Prices

Let's have some bold predictions.

How much will gast cost on July 4th? How about Labor Day?

I've seen predictions ranging anywhere from $2.50 to $5.50.

It's difficult to predict. Consider... I've got a Consumer Reports Magazine - the May, 2008 edition, which was probably printed in March or April - and in calculating the annual cost of fuel for vehicles, they were figuring at $3.00/gallon for regular unleaded. They were WAY off!

A more signigficant question might be, how much will gas have to cost before there's a meaningful change in average Americans' driving habits? (We're already seeing a very real trend toward higher-mileage cars in the showrooms. And fuel consumption is down by 6% or so, depending on who you ask. And I s'pose that might be meaningful when you consider that up until recently, fuel consumption has always gone up, up, up.)

I did some checking.

When I abandoned my motor vehicle as daily transportation for all intents and purposes - in 1986 - gas cost about 92.7 cents per gallon. And bike transportation made fantastic economic sense back then. How much more sense does it make in 2008?

3 comments:

Josh said...

4.99 by July 4th
5.15 by Labor Day

Anonymous said...

Thought you might enjoy a post I stumbled across from a gentleman in India. He was calculating the cost of ownership for bicycle transit. It's a big world, but many of us are thinking about the same stuff.

http://ambrishbajaj.blogspot.com/2007/06/bycycle-as-investment.html

Oh, and I predict $4.39 on July 4, $4.79 on Labor Day.

Rick O (your former neighbor - overtrick@gmail.com)

Clancy said...

My guess is $4.60 by July 4th. $5.00 by Labor Day(boy will we have to labor by then to buy a gallon)