Stopped by the petrol station on the way home from work yesterday to top off the Citroen in preparation for gas shortages and price gouging. I paid as much for little more than half a tank as I did two 350 ml cans of Red Bull...

It seems the previous hurricane that hit Texas and Louisiana where all the refineries are located in the south, and the one now brewing in the Atlantic getting ready to roger Miami and maybe all of Florida is having it's effect on petrol prices across the country. Well especially in the southeastern US anyway.

Allot of stations are now out of petrol in Florida.

The hurricane is predicted to move over East Tennessee where I live on Tuesday. But hopefully by the time it hits here, it will be downgraded to a tropical store of winds around 50 mph, maybe 6" of rain. Luckily it will have 900 miles of land to peter out.

I learned from Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 to "stock up" in August before hurricane season to prevent getting raped on petrol prices.

This Mobil station was already out of premium fuel and totally out of Diesel. Mid grade is a blend of premium and low grade. Luckily all my cars except for my Fiat turbo Spider and turbo Yugo will run on 87 RON+MON/2 just fine without any pinking.

Poor guy with a Saturn (now a defunct division of GM) Sky turbo (Built in Europe as the OPEL GT/Vauxhall VX roadster) had to drive on through all the pumps and look for premium fuel elsewhere....

Petrol was around $2.00 a US gallon a month ago. Now it's up to $2.59 at most stations to $2.69 a gallon at some stations. Before I explain our modified version of the Imperial measurement system only it comes to liquids, a US gallon is 3.98 liters as opposed to 4.54 liters.

That's around £ .54 per liter as opposed to £ .50 a month ago for low octane E10.

What kills me is as soon as a hurricane is predicted, petrol prices immediately start to spike even before one makes land.

They claim the spike is due to people filling up all their cars and jerry cans as soon as a hurricane is brewing out to sea which causes a low supply (but not exactly a shortage) which in turn drives the price of petrol up. I don't understand this but I'm not an economist.

I think petrol stations just look at this as an excuse to gouge people and make an extra buck. What do you think?

My 2cc.

Is fuel expensive today?

In 1968 it took me about 6.5mins to earn a litre of fuel.

Today 2017 based on minimum wage it takes about 7 mins .

Cars are now, about twice as efficient in fuel usage, but we all travel further to work etc.

It's £1.15 here (south coast of England) at the moment. That's about $1.52. It's only fluctuated by about £0.03 over the last couple of months

I'm all but certain that my next modern car will be pure electric. I rarely travel more than 120 miles in a day, and mostly (95%+) travel less than 15 miles a day, so looking at the new Nissan LEAF that was launched on Wednesday, which has a real-world range of 150 miles, that'll work for me. Shetland has EV charging stations scattered around the isles.

Zap Map shows the extent of charging stations throughout the UK, which continues to grow rapidly. https://www.zap-map.com/live/

About 1.50€/litre here. No way to operate electric vehicle where I use car, maybe on shopping and with driving kids but practically all other driving is 150-350km. And, at winter the range of electric vehicles drops fast, at -20'C that range isn't same than +20'C...

Yes, it is expensive, but not too expensive yet. Still is possible to have some fuel crematories on the road...

Oh, the irony!
Three of the *old-school power stations in Yorkshire are nearer to us than any charging point that's listed on that site.
( *Drax, which was the largest coal-fired power station in Europe at one point, is just on the other side of the river Ouse.)
Postcode is 'YO8 6QE'.
.
Ah well, looks like it's solar panels plastered over all of the sheds and a wind turbine, disguised as an apple tree, at the far end of the garden...

Orkney has invested in renewable energy over recent years and now produces around 120% of its entire needs through wind, solar and tidal generation. It's connected to the National Grid and is able to export a certain percentage of its excess, but the cables aren't currently able to take the full amount. As a consequence of this, the island council is encouraging residents to make the change to pure electric in order to sponge up some of the excess. Per head of population, Orkney has more EVs on the road than anywhere else in the Uk. Here's a link to a video about it. At the time it was filmed (April 2015) they were up around 107% capacity, but they have now reached 120%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXe1hBvlylw

Video comes from this vlog, which has been, and continues to be, a really big eye opener.
https://www.youtube.com/user/fullychargedshow/videos

That's a good question. I'll have to sit down and do the math but seems like I figured up what I made when I first started driving in 1986, gasoline was around 80 cents per gallon and I made $3.25 an hour at a grocery store working part time.

So back then 25% of an hour's wages went toward petrol compared to what I make now it's only 10% compared to what it is today.

That would be the equivalent to at least $6.00 a gallon in today's wages.

When I went to tech school, I drove 25 miles to school and 25 miles back. Now I only live 8 miles from my job.

some swedish scientist did figure out the the making of one EV puts out the same amount of co2 as driving another car for 7 years. EVs are nice for inner city and local driving but the rest? If you go on holiday after emptying the batterrry you are stranded for while to charge the thing up provided you find a loading point in rural france for instance. And if everyone goes driving EV where they would have to get all the power from???

Well as you know I, m driving on LPG for about 20 years now. Here in the Netherlands 1 liter costs about 60 eurocent.. But I drive always just across the Belgium border and suddenly a liter Lpg cost around 27 eurocent per liter.. Germany is about the same as the Netherlands..

Driving on Lpg injection I do about the same milage running on petrol or lpg..
Power output is also at the same level as petrol..

Petrol is about 1.30 euro (in Germany en Belgium) Here in the Netherlands it is about 1.40

So each km I save at least 10 cents for the last 20 years.. So a 3 times hura for Lpg..

Ps. I never experienced more wear of my engines driving on LPG..