my mental meanderings...

$3 a gallon for gas

Well, I heard on the news this morning that gas finally hit over $3 a gallon in San Francisco today. Man, that's insane. I just filled up last night for $2.55 a gallon. Some analyst is predicting that gas will hit $100 a barrel sometime within the next 20 years or so. Geez, that would be at least $5 a gallon for us, right? But I guess I shouldn't be complaining too much since other countries pay more for gas than we do, like Europe.

It seems like with this recent oil crisis that car companies, besides Toyota, Honda and perhaps Ford, are now jumping into the hybrid and alternative fuel cell vehicle market. I know a few car companies have been developing hybrid and AFC cars for years, but why haven't they hit the market yet? It seems like we could really use them about now.

What's with waiting 8 months for a Prius? You would think that Toyota could have done some better production planning to meet up with demand. Of course tight supply does drive up prices. So maybe they're artificially keeping the supply of the Prius low so they can sell it at a higher price? I also heard that the Prius is only manufactured in Japan? Hmm...if they manufacture it here, let's say at the NUMI plant, then maybe it wouldn't cost so much because they wouldn't have to pay for the extra shipping to get them from Japan to the US.

I've heard people say that buying a hybrid car doesn't really save you much because of the higher cost of the car. But I think not having to fill up for 500 miles or so could be worth it. That would mean assuming you drove 1,000 miles a month that you would only need to fill up twice a month, maybe even less, depending on how much you drive. Although personally if I had a hybrid I would probably drive it more, since it gets such good gas mileage and I wouldn't have to fill up as often. =)

posted by ~clai @ 4:01 PM