hondaBeater

since europe has been hurting from high gas prices long before the US, shouldn't they be closer to an alternate fuel than the US??


I think whatever they got going on there will happen here very soon.


non american members: please tell us what we will see next year.

F22CAP2

The answer is "congestion charge" or "CO2 tax".

jasonjm

DI+Turbo+Diesel rush

smaller engines

smaller cars

Honda Fit Turbo Diesel ftw no?

dombey

I don't think we'll see much of anything really truly new. As much as everyone bitches and moans about gas prices, here is the inflation adjusted chart.
It shows that while gas prices are just about as high as they've ever been once adjusted for inflation, they aren't way out of line (yet). If you adjusted this for real incomes in the US, gas would be a smaller % of your wages than it used to be.
So, what I'm saying is that I don't think gas prices are anywhere near high enough to really bring on a change in behavior from consumers or car companies. Sure, the demand for new cars is higher now than it was a few years ago, but if prices start to decline for gas, the interest will wane.
And my bet is that the oil companies won't let prices get so high that the car companies start doing anything too serious with alternative fuels.

Slithr

[QUOTE=dombey,May 5 2008, 12:22 PM] And my bet is that the oil companies won't let prices get so high that the car companies start doing anything too serious with alternative fuels.

For the most part it's not the oil companies that will decide the price of oil and thus gasoline. It's the owners of that oil, primarily the middle eastern potentates. If they are smart, they will open the spigots to moderate the price of oil somewhat so alternatives are not as attractive and we will continue to use their product at a high level.

Short term greed on their part will do a lot towards moving us away from oil as a primary passenger car fuel.

dombey

^^^ right, that's what I'm referring to. The OIL companies, not the GAS companies. I think the GAS companies will do what they've been doing - passing the cost onto the consumer.

Karl O.

Europe has better public transportation. A lot of people there don't use cars on a daily basis. Their cities were there long before cars existed.

Not so much here.

wickerbill

Europe isn't nearly as spread out as the US is. It's hard to really compare the two and say that what they do is the way we should do it when the environments are so different to begin with. Getting smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles in the garages of more people is definitely a good place to start here in the US, but we're never going to have public transportation set up to the degree that they do.

s2kpdx01

^+1
Trying to say it works in europe so it should work here and vice versa just doesn't make sense in a lot of cases. People just drive a lot less on avg there. That is how they get around their high fuel prices. IF you only had to drive 6000 miles a year $6/gallon would be cheaper then 12,000 miles at $4/gallon. A higher population density means buses and trains work better.

GPMike

[QUOTE=wickerbill,May 5 2008, 02:30 PM] Europe isn't nearly as spread out as the US is.