Are the ultra high gas prices hurting you hypermilers?
 

Last fillup was at $3.799 / gal - they jacked it up 10 cents before the Memorial Day Weekend to rip off drivers. But my past weekly 7 day tanks ranged from $25 to $28.60 - still really affordable. With my 44 MPG 1999 Civic HX M/T, gas can go up to $6 / gal for it to start annoying me - a $45+ tank fillup. I usually try to fill up every 7 days to know how much I go through in a week.

Some of you drive hybrids and get amazing MPG tanks. What are your weekly MPG tanks like, and at what cost of gas would it start to hurt you?

Maybe you 80 MPG hypermilers wouldn't hurt until $10/gas!

But not all you you drive great MPG cars and must be hurting now. How do you cope?

I'm prepared to bike to save gas. Got 3 great commuter bikes with panniers and a Burley Nomad for 100lb heavy duty grocery shopping by bike! Since 2005, I saved $197 in gas by biking!

At $2.65 / gal gas was hurting me in my 20.5 MPG avg minivan. That's why I drive my HX. The minivan is rarely driven now. It's just a backup vehicle, cargo hauler, and improvised RV.

I protested when gasoline hit forty CENTS a gallon! And I was driving a Corvair (about 19 mpg) when the national average was about 12 mpg.

I'd say since I've started hypermiling my cost have basically stayed the same. The increased mileage and the higher prices have canceled each other out.

Summer of 1968 age 17 59 Austin Healey Sprite 1 cent per mile 32 MPG 32 cents per gal.

1984 Honda VRX 1.5 44 MPG, dont remember what gas was then.

Last 4 cars
Scion XB 36 MPG 2005
Toyota Corolla 36 MPG 2006
Honda Del Sol 43 MPG
Honda Civic VX 57 MPG


My wife loves her 2006 Murano, averages 21.8 MPG. We always take my VX when we go somewhere together. 2/3 rds of our mileage is in my car.

That works out to 1/3 at 21.8 and 2/3 at 57, about 45 MPG average overall.

Our gas bill has be fairly consistent at around $200 per month while our consumption in gallons has dropped at about the same percentage the price has increased.

For me its about 5.7 cents a mile compared to 1 cent a mile in 1968. I was fresh out of high school in 68 and made $25 for 40 hours work. I could drive 250 miles on $2.50 in gas.

Last tank was 308.5 miles on $20.89.

I drive about 2k a month on about $112 in gas.

Our net worth is in the higher 6 digit figures.

I built two houses in the last 6 years, after working on cars for 30. Cap gains on the two houses was almost 385K. We owe nothing to anyone except monthly bills. Our hosue is assesed at 319K.

regards
gary

My wife fills the 5 up about every two weeks at about $50/tank. I recently have taken two weeks just to use a 1/4 tank in the Escort, so our direct cost for fuel is pretty minor.

So while we wouldn't want it to go up much, the truth is that we could still afford the same miles per month if gas cost twice as much, and our driving habits really wouldn't change too much from what they are now, except that I would probably bike more to and from work. But that wouldn't make much difference to our budget overall.

In the interest of saving money, we are actually going to make a much more significant change by selling the Mazda5. It's not because we don't like it, but we could drive an extra 3000 miles per month for the same money as our payment, and that's money we've decided we'd like to spend elsewhere.

You've probably got a manual transmission...I had the 2-speed Powerslide...I think my best mpg was somewhere around 23...that was after about 60k miles break-in from when I rebuilt it...

lately, whenever I start thinking maybe I'm becoming excessive with the measures I'm taking to save gas I see the price of gas shoot another 10 cents or so and think to myself--oh, right, a goal 60mpg is quite worth the excessive EOCing. Gas is now $3.92 at its cheapest in my town, and some places are more than $4/gal -- it's nice that my penchant for seeing how far I can stretch my gas is being well rewarded.

For the amount of miles I drive per gallon of gas, the price of gas still feels relatively cheap, so I'm not liable to not take a trip because of the price of gas. Next time I fill up it may be $4/gal though which would put the fill up near $40, when I'm used to paying around $27 to fill up. Last fill up was in the low $30s, which is pretty uncommon.

It is sort of hurting me, sort of not. Since I have been in NZ, every single tank has cost more per litre than the last tank :) But the price per mile has remained constant due to improving hypermiling skills. I am also making each tank last 3-4 weeks now (two weeks so far, just over half a tank).

However, one thing people may not notice is rising food prices, due to transport costs. This is a BIG problem in NZ, and food prices are 2-3x what they were 2-3 years ago! Cheese is 4x the price compared to 2006. In fact it has gone from $10 to $15 for a kilo block of cheese in the last 9 months since I have been here.

THIS is my greatest concern. not only food but other consumer goods are rising as well as consumer services.

we "hypermile" everything...cars, housing, and goods/services. yet, we are struggling to makes ends meet.

instead of punishing the struggling working class, we need to work towards lowering fuel prices while increasing energy guzzling taxes. look, the US gas guzzler tax is a one time tax of, for example, $2100 for a vehicle that gets just under 20mpg.

that's a slap on the wrist especially for elite earners. how about charging extra yearly taxes on consumption of larger vehicles, homes, etc.

i believe future economic success lies in taxation of what is consumed, not what is earned. raising taxes and creating new ones is what is squeezing out the middle class.

How nice for those who need larger vehicle's for large family's, or wheel chair accessible conversion vans, or private contractors barley able to make ends meet. They higher gas prices are punishment enough.

I find the cost of owning a vehicle to be outrages and gas is only a small part of that $.09 a mile for gas in my car is 1/3 of my cost per mile for a car that is paid for, I don't hear many people complain about the rest of the cost of car ownership.

id kill for 3.79 again lol its been $4.09 ever since last wendsday...

there does need to be some kind of monthy or somehing tax on gas guzzlers, now ookiu brings up a good point, some people NEED a large vehicle. There should be some kind of permit system (like handicapped license plates and tags) that allow you to get around the tax...like lets say you own X number of kids or your a private business owner or handicapped vans, etc

but the people who just want to show off and flaunt thier money around no tax the crap outa em lol

yes, i thought of that as i finished my post and ran out the door. all good points, and i can think of another exception...someone "stuck" with an older, larger vehicle that cannot afford a new/different one.

but, in addition to tougher guzzler taxes, there should be a strict(anti-loop hole) policy to protect those that really NEED a larger vehicle(like the affore mentioned).

also more, better tax credits/rebates perhaps beyond hybrids should be implimented. so, when a struggling family does get a new low cost vehicle, they will be rewarded by wise FE car purchases.

The problem is that transportation and driving are not a right. And while I am in favor of helping disabled folks financially to overcome things like the higher cost of transportation, I do NOT in any way support it for large families. Being disabled is not a choice, but having a large family is. Millions of families could save substantially on fuel costs just by planning their trips better.

The one thing that any thinking person should be able to understand is that the price of gas is going up, has always gone up, and will always continue to go up over the long run. I have no sympathy for failing to plan!

I disagree with that premise. Inexpensive, fuel efficient cars are a dime a dozen.

I've had friends drive cars for years that they purchased for $500. If a person cannot afford that, then they probably shouldn't be driving at all. (The majority of people I've talked to in such dire financial straights aren't paying for insurance anyway.)

There is no such thing as being 'stuck' with a vehicle. Even somebody upside down on a loan is not stuck with it.

The gas prices are hurting us a bit. My wife drives a 2005 Toyota Corrolla that gets an average of 30 mpg with her driving. I've got a 2006 Chevy Colorado that I'm about to try to sell. Just over a month ago I bought a much older 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier station wagon. It currently gets equal gas mileage as the truck does, but it is improving. Not only that, but once the truck is gone, we will have 1 less car payment and we'll be spending less on insurance per month. This is to try to offset the rising price of food. With 11 year old twins, our food bill is getting higher and higher every week.

Hopefully better than the handicap plate system. It seems at least 10% of cars have them and how a handicap person can climb into these monster trucks is beyond me.

My first car was a Fiat 500 Bianchina Sport https://www.caranddriver.com/news/aut...ina_auto_shows. The Sport boasted 21 horsepower versus the standard model's 18 hp. What a rocket (not!). But it got over 50 mpg with the pedal on the floor all the time (no other way to drive a mini Fiat). As a high-schooler, it was great because with gas at $.25 per gallon I could drive for 2 weeks (200 miles) on a buck's worth of gas. To say the car was slow is like saying a Smart car is short.

There were lots of little cars in those days but cheap gas and the need for power killed the ones that didn't blow up on the freeway trying to keep up with the Detroit iron. I, for one, would like to see some of them come back.

If gas prices doubled and everything else remained the same it wouldnt be so bad. America runs on fuel so all of a sudden a week from now milk cheese eggs etc. goes up 50 cents. The transportation costs just to move fuel around goes up. Even if oil companies were honest and need the prices to be where they are, the government hasnt helped. they could find a way to tax other things to offset it somewhat. I don't smoke or drink...tax that higher.

vette there is already a huge tax break for people with kids and disabled people. Where did your stimulus go? Many probably got their nails done with it and didnt shift budgets around for the rising fuel costs.

The price of gas is clearly one thing on our mind.

Even with the fuel savings tricks we have, my wife and I are noticing the price of gas, especially with the long commutes that are built into our respective jobs. The hypermiling is clearly helping (my last tank was 47.8mpg, on a supposedly 29mpg car), but even so we notice the price increase. In fact, at this point my MPG is going up slower than the price of gas is rising. So even with the hypermiling, our monthly expense for fuel is still rising. So we have made some effort to "combine trips", and otherwise save on gas.

OTOH its a balance thing. Even with the price of gas, we still are not hurting enough to cut out all of our driving for entertainment. After all, with my CRX currently (with the warm weather) getting mid-40's for MPG, a short drive somewhere still only costs a few dollars (for gas), and often brings in more enjoyment than the gas costs us. One example of this, is that my wife and I live about an hour's drive away from a moderate sized tourist area. As a result, we have purchased annual "season passes" to a "fun park" (combo water and theme park), and we will often go there "just for fun" (despite the gas costs). Why? Because the drive is still not too costly (in terms of gas spent) for a day of fun together. And as to the park costs themselves, it turns out that while the daily passes are very costly (for a day of fun), their annual passes are only about 3 times the costs of their daily passes (which makes the annual "season passes" a really good deal for locals, such as ourselves, that just like getting out and having fun every so often). Yes, we pay some gas to get there, but I just consider that part of the cost of the entertainment (and even with the costs of the drive, the annual "season passes" make the cost of going to the fun park still fairly cheap for a day of fun)!

BTW: Yes, I know, I need to get my garage entry updated with recent gas logs. Rest assured I have those logs (I keep a paper log book in my CRX, that gets every fill up recorded), but I just haven't gotten around to transferring those entries to my garage entry on this site. FWIW I do know I was sometimes doing as bad as 37 in the winter, however with the warmer weather I'm now consistently getting mid to high 40's with that car.

I don't think taxing individual drivers for driving larger vehicles is necessarily the way to go. I say, increase the tax burden on the oil speculators and oil companies that are reaping the profits from this mess. If you're buying and buying and buying barrels of the oil with the intention of driving up the price so that you can sell it down the line and make a huge profit, then you should be prepared to lay down some ducat for it.

Gas is hurting. I am by no means wealthy, and I am the sole earner taking care of a wife and an infant daughter. I make less than $10 an hour and, here in WV, that's a good wage. My last fill-up cost me $46.32, and we'll go through that in less than a week. It's almost to the point where my first hour at work every day is just to pay for the cost of fuel getting there and back. And as I said, in between my full-time office job and my tattoo studio, I make decent money for this area. I can't imagine how people pulling down $6.50 an hour and supporting more kids are doing it.

Having just recently parked my Infiniti that I was filling every week at a rate of at least $50 per fill-up and going to my Civic which I just purchased that I fill every 2 weeks at less than $40 per fill-up, I'm not bothered by the recent increase of gas at all. I actually hope this might be the start of the push that this country needs to start doing something proactive about the dependancy we have on oil.

Actually you would be at about 37mpg average (not 45mpg)

100 miles @ 21.8mpg=~4.56gallons
200 miles @ 57 mpg=~3.54 gallons

300 miles/8.10 gallons=~37mpg

you've made good points before on this issue, but i must respectfully disagree...

two examples off the top of my head are the single mom and the individual that cannot maintain a $500 car his/herself.

obviously there are some out there that have nothing left after paying the monthly bills. a $500 or $3000 car is not possible because there is no savings.
if these high gas prices continue(along w/related rising prices), it is my concern that my family and others like us will be included in the "empty savings group."

BTW, people ARE being stuck in vehicles, especially SUVs. unable to sell or trade is a bad place to be.

"Big oil execs making 32mil a year and we're paying upwards of $4 a gallon.. Hubberts peak you say? Oh ok, I believe you. "

I saw them answering questions in front of congress the other day. They were asked, "how much do you personally make every year?". The answers varied from "around $2 million" upwards of $10 million. 2 of the big oil execs answered "I don't recall".

First off, I would imagine that much of these guys' transportation costs and so on are also covered by the company. So a lot of that income is maybe, probably discretionary.

Second, isn't "I don't recall" pretty close to perjury? I mean, who "can't recall" what their salary is?

Grr. Just griping. Their other argument was that it wasn't "all profit", and that they re-invest most of it. I don't know about that, either, but I kind of doubt it.

oil CEO salaries?

if these will be attacked, then let's include the drug companies, hospitals, retailers, home improvement, etc.

i challenge ANYONE out there to disprove that the capital is there to support a strong US economy via fair pay standards. point being that it is not a tax issue, it's greed. taxes along with pay should be fair.

take my company, Sysco Foods...no where at any level will you find the multi-million/billion dollar salaries. do a search, 'cause i won't do it for you. our profit margin is relatively low BTW.

my issue is not my pay, but what i'm taxed!!!

[QUOTE=bowtieguy;102295]oil CEO salaries?

if these will be attacked, then let's include the drug companies, hospitals, retailers, home improvement, etc.

[QUOTE]

I only mentioned CEO salaries for oil companies because we are, after all, talking about oil prices. You're right, it is greed. I'm not an economist by any means, but the talking heads on TV that claim knowledge about this sort of thing are even grumbling that there's no explainable reason why gas has doubled in the last year.

bodhi,

i wasn't calling you or anyone else out, just heard that argument many times. the fact is, even tho this discussion is about gas, many companies could charge less for there goods/services or pay emplyees better(how 'bout a combo) if it were not for CEO salaries and shareholder interests.

but, from another thread...

https://money.cnn.com/2008/05/20/news...ion=2008052010

N/P, i didn't feel called out :). As for your other post, I do imagine that there are probably prescription medication forums out there where people grumble about the CEO salaries at Merck and Pfizer as well :). I wonder if those people have thought about hypermiling their meds...

I can't beleive people like you survive on $10/hr and have a wife, kid, and 03 Vibe GT! I thought I was poor at $20/hr 2 years ago, now I make $65,000 / year and can mostly spend on anything I want and splurge on good food! I should be a good enough catch for a chick!

it's all about how and where you live, I suppose. We are not materialistic people by any means. We buy (and usually prefer) 2nd hand or vintage clothes, we grow a lot of our own food (both vegetarians), etc. We bought the vibe only because its reliable and our previous car (a 99 jetta) had us in the shop at least once a month and this one is relatively trouble-free. We don't eat out very often, we don't go to movies, we don't usually buy new things (even the Vibe was used).

but we're not poor, at least not for this area. We live in a house (paid for), we have 2 cars, we have a daughter with an expensive diaper habit (haven't trained her to hypermile her diapers yet :). We don't eat out but we eat well, and generally make better meals than you can get in local restaurants anyway. Hypermile your entire life man, you'd be amazed what you can do without and where you can conserve. $65k a year here would support us in relative comfort for almost 3 years.

the gas prices are actualy helping my hypermiling. i caost when i can and used to get cars blowing by me to get to the light but now seems like a few are doing the same or are not in as big a rush now.

Stay out of debt as much as possible is my first advice for living better. Even in triple digit income territory, past credit cards are still a drag. But at least I know I can get them paid off now.:D

As for changes, well, heck, I found this site! I knew I needed to squeeze some extra mpg out of the old girl and just by slowing down and a few other minor habit changes I'm down to one tank of gas a week for 600 miles of commuting. Much better than I used to do. I'll keep on trying to do better. I'd like to rationalize a scooter but my around town trips are already sparse and limited to big hauls at Wal-Mart or Lowes or something so....

I would argue that they are simply unwilling to do what is necessary to remedy the situation. Granted, anybody upsidedown in a loan is not looking at desireable options with respect to trading down, but the options do exist - even if it is to the extreme of letting the repo-man take the vehicle.

The deficiency of $10-15k on a vehicle worth $30k for example is still allot easier to deal with than something like a $600/month payment + twice the fuel cost vs. a cheap economy car.

Persons needing to jettison such a gas guzzler could likely skip 3 months of payments before reposession, get a decent running car for the $1800, and work out the rest with the lender later on. No more $600 payment. No more budget killing fuel expense. Unfortunately one's credit rating will take a hit, but it takes far less time to recover a credit worthy score when one can actually afford their payments than if they are always strung out to the max and constantly fighting with late payments and a high debt to income ratio.

We took a less extreme approach when we sold our pickup last year by selling it for under book value. It was certainly worth at least a thousand more than we got for it, but we were sinking over $250/month worth of fuel into it, and sucking up the loss on a quick sale has saved us substantially in the long run. We are now extremely glad we sold it when we did!

We are also prepared to sell our Mazda5 now for less than our loan balance because the long term financials of it make sense to us in allowing us to get a favorable refinance of our home. Just because we are upsidedown in it, like I said, does not make us stuck. It just means we need to sacrifice some extra cash from somewhere else to make it happen.

Averaged 40 mpg or so for the last fillup, and paid 41 in gas.

Last time I filled, I paid 35 or so for 10 gallons...=/. Oh well, I get to laugh at the people paying 100+...

If you know something of cars and can do most of your own repairs the situation is a lot different than if you are a clueless n00b with cars. Even just being able to tell if the mechanic is wafting universal obscurant out of his nether orifice is a big plus.

A lot of people simply don't have the knowledge or skills to make a go of it with an older, less reliable car with no warranty.

I post on several boards where just average non-car enthusiast Americans chat with each other.. The level of ignorance as to what makes a car work and why is truly mind boggling, and these are far from stupid people I'm talking about.

A car is the most complex technological item most Americans will ever come in contact with and very damn few of them have a decent idea what makes it go and what to do if it doesn't.

What do you mean is it hurting, hell yeah it's hurting when I'm spending 20% of my gross income on fuel, how that doesn't hurt is beyond my feeble level of comprehension.

Sorry I just had to say it...
There's NO way in the world any amount of hypermiling can offset a 4x increase in the price of fuel, because the reality is fuel used to be 1.169 not that long ago and that price remained for close to 20 years!

Y'all done got used to $2 fuel, Wow I ain't used to NONE of that crap, hypermiling now isn't a waste of time but it would have been nice if folks had seen it sooner, way sooner.

Not to let out my anger on you guys, sorry again but it's the fact most of the rest of the world still doesn't see it that frustrates.

Are you saying you wouldn't LOVE to see $2 a gallon gas again? It's not gonna happen, but I would love to see it again myself. High gas prices are here to stay, and we are still relatively cheap compared to most of the world. So we can either deal with it, stay home, or ride a bike. :cool:

Yippe for high fuel prices. :rolleyes:

Way harsh on staying home. How is one to work to meet basic necessity's... like food, (bike? Way too dangerous in my area and I live close to work 12 miles one way, 6 via the express way. While no one has been run over recently, things do get thrown at the bikers.) of course one can always grow food, but the enviromental damage if 300+ million people start doing so..... Land use would go right out the window. Deforest station in mass..... yuck....., or at least thats how I see the cookie crumbling.

I imagine we will never see prices below 2.50 again. :mad:

Cellulosic Ethanol, Oil Shale, and Heavy Crude Oil will see to that, as Light Crude Oil runs out. :thumbdown:

Move closer to work, car pool, more fuel efficient car or motorized bike, public transportation if available. These are the only viable alternative we have right now.

I don't get the people here calling for a "guzzler tax" on high consumption vehicles. We already have that, it's called the fuel costs itself. I also don't understand the animosity towards the high consumption vehicle. If the cost of the vehicle is untenable to its owner the situation will naturally work itself out. Perhaps I see things a bit differently because I have one foot in each world. I commute my little Toyota Yaris and get in the 40 mpg range. I drive 1.5 hours and about 42 miles each way. Once a week I commute about an extra 80 miles on top of that to go to grad school, so trust me, its in my best interests to burn as little fuel as possible. On the other hand, my wife an I have a Jeep Wrangler that we have almost entirely as a toy for us to wrench on, play with and abuse, and I put about 50-100 miles on it every week or two at the moment, usually for a sunday drive or trip to see friends or to the beach with the top down. The Jeep gets ~18mpg, so I use maybe 4 gallons in it in a two week period. Why should I have to pay an exorbitant tax? Then again, I'm from New Hampshire. I generally don't think what I spend my money on is anyones business but my own. I'm also pushing for my job to let me telecommute, in which case I would be using very little fuel total.. so even though I'd reduced my consumption considerably, and spent 98% of my driving in an efficient vehicle with good efficiency driving techniques, you propose taxing me for the vehicle thats parked in my yard not going anywhere? Because I might burn 4 gallons of gas in it?