Gas prices.....and up we go 8-)

I'm getting a little seasick of all this, but maybe the car companies (and the public) will take this mileage thing seriously and build, and buy some decent cars for a change. Now that Fiat owns Chrysler I wonder if we'll see some worthy small cars. That deal did go through, right?

What are gas prices doing in your neck of the woods, here on the (the east end of the) island of new york its around 3-4 bucks a gallon now .... That's for a weenie US gallon

Rick

$2.50-ish for 87 octane here. Prices have gone down each week for the last 3-4 weeks.

Cab
1990 325i(s)
2004 325XiT

Quote
rkj
I'm getting a little seasick of all this, but maybe the car companies (and the public) will take this mileage thing seriously and build, and buy some decent cars for a change.

And there's the problem. Everyone has a different opinion of "decent" :-)
But I agree, most cars are rubbish. Gas in the state of Washington varies greatly by region. 87oct in Seattle runs about $3-$3.10 while 400 miles away in the deserts of Spokane it's about $2.60. In my neck of the woods in the great bottle neck of the cascade range, the Columbia River, it's gouged up to about $3 as well.

And if my friends would stop getting married, I wouldn't have such thorough and up to date knowledge of gas prices around here

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

When oil price goes up, gas follows, the reverse not so much...

Now there are more frugal cars than, say 10 or 15 years ago.
Check out the BMW1 series!
It is still a very interesting car to drive.
And Rick, American automakers had small cars since i can remember.
GM owns Opel, Ford has decent small cars, Chrysler had some European brands as well.
Problem is they are all after making profit. More expensive, complex and luxurious cars are (in theory) perhaps more profitable.
I think what went wrong in America was they were not selling like before, and instead of looking for new kinds of products to offer (diversify), they pressed on the "bigger, better, faster, more" philosophy that was notoriously failing.
Perhaps they can revert it now, and evolve into offering more desirable products.

The alliance of Fiat and Chrysler is yet to prove viable, Fiat was struggling some years ago because they earned the reputation of making cheap crappy cars (and some models deserved it!) and it will take some time until confidence is restored.
They offer good looking cars now, through the several brands of the group, and they seem to be doing fine lately, specially Alfa Romeo and they hit it with the new Fiat 500. They are not the ultimate economic cars yet, and i doubt they are seriously trying...

JP

And yet your gas is still cheaper than ours, though it's risen more.

At the moment regular price for 95 RON is € 1.33 per litre (about $ 5 per gallon) round here. Where I go it is € 1.199 ($4.5/g), on road with hard competition between 5 stations within 1.5 km. In Holland it goes up to € 1.6 ($6/g) and scandinavia will probably be even worse.

That's funny Cab, our prices have been on a steady rise for about four months now- weird...

Jose- I loved Opel's, I thought that was a really decent car and yes, there are some decent small cars, one of my daughters bought a Ford focus and she loves it. From what I've heard and read It is a decent ride but I was thinking more on the electric side of the fence (we put men on the moon, seems like we could get a decent electric car together).

I wonder if we got the Fiat 500 in the states, that car looked like it had possibility's.

The Volt from Chevy uses a small gas motor to charge the electric side of the driving only motor. That seems like a reasonable set-up until we can better it. I'm sure a better way of charging "as you go" could be figured out (remember the moon thing) and even a small, cleverly designed small motor/charger as a back up is an okay deal.

Go go battery research

Rick

I wish I could put my hands on a Chevy Volt...

As I write, my car is without clutch and I may not be able to sort this out on the roadside.
Wish it had an electric motor. No clutch, no oil changes, no sparks, no gas, no filters or belts...
:undecided:

Well, I don't know about "no sparks"

Brushless DC motors produce no sparks

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Archeo-peteriX
Brushless DC motors produce no sparks

Induction AC motors also.

And sparks at brush DC motors indicate something is wrong.

On the contrary, gasoline engines can't work without sparks.

They can... Lasers for example...