How high do you think gas prices will go?

[dvcgirl67]

From what I understand, the issue of self serve gas is brought up every so often and most NJ residents will tar and feather any politician who dares to advance such a proposal.

There are many lame excuses, such as safety, unemployment, etc. but the real reason is pumping your own gas is an inconvenience when you’re accustomed to having someone do it for you.

(I’m a former NJ resident so I know of what I speak. I enjoyed having such service too. If I’m in NJ with less than half a tank, I often top off there.)

You're correct....and I have always thought it was stupid. It's a "thing" here....like we're proud of it or something. There are t-shirts that say..."Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas". Ok...but when we lived in other states and had to pump our own gas...it was way faster than having to wait for an attendant.

 

[Julie's Haircut]

From what I understand, the issue of self serve gas is brought up every so often and most NJ residents will tar and feather any politician who dares to advance such a proposal.

There are many lame excuses, such as safety, unemployment, etc. but the real reason is pumping your own gas is an inconvenience when you’re accustomed to having someone do it for you.

(I’m a former NJ resident so I know of what I speak. I enjoyed having such service too. If I’m in NJ with less than half a tank, I often top off there.)

The real reason is most NJ residents are lazy.

Many times I'd rather pump my own gas than wait for the attendant.

And all those excuses are bogus. Unsafe to pump your own gas? How do the residents of the 48 or 49 other states survive the treacherous process?

Concerned about putting gas attendants out of work?? Give me a break. That excuse is most likely used by those who use self-checkout at supermarkets.

 

[mrodgers]

Everyone barking off old gas prices is useless without locations in the avatars. Lowest price I have recorded going back to beginning of summer 2019 is a couple of fills on the motorcycle for 89 oct at $2.39. It was mainly pretty consistently at $2.85 throughout 2019-2020 in western Pennsylvania for 89 oct. I don't track the car so I don't know about 87 oct, usually only $0.05 more for 89.

 

[ford family]

Just to make you all feel a little better, petrol here in the UK at the supermarket (cheapest) filling stations equates to USD7.50 per US gallon!

ford family

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Everyone barking off old gas prices is useless without locations in the avatars.

That's a bit "get off my lawn" vibe but the other point is comparing in the past may not be relevant depending on where one lives. For instance MO raised the gas tax effective October 1st by 2.5 cents (a multi-year plan for a gradual increase year over year until the total increase is 12.5 cents comparing September 30th, 2021 to July 1st 2025). Sure doesn't seem like a lot but it is part of comparing. MO previously was the 2nd lowest in terms of gas tax.

Gas is typically lower in MO than in KS at least in my area but is now getting closer with the gas tax being raised and will eventually be higher at least in terms of gas tax (unless KS raises). KS tax is 24.3 cents for gas (diesel a few cents higher) and MO's is now 19.5 cents (will eventually be 29.5 cents). There's a convoluted way of getting a refund for the increase (that you can't even start to claim until July 2022) though but it's not expected for many people to actually go through the process of getting a refund (intentionally).

 

[dez1978]

$4.29 a gallon at the least expensive non-membership gas station (ARCO).

$4.15 a gallon at Costco.

Who knows long term? Should be dropping given people are driving less. The car we bought 15 months ago just turned 5,000 miles. Car we bought over 3 years ago has 12,000 miles on it. We retired three months ago so no work commute anymore, so I expect driving to drop a lot. Good thing is, the car we bought last year has gotten up to 55 mpg on the freeway.

My car I bought like 3 weeks ago has 2500 miles on it lol. I don't even have plates yet.

 

[MillauFr]

My car I bought like 3 weeks ago has 2500 miles on it lol. I don't even have plates yet.

Where are you driving that you are putting on 800 miles per week? Does your job require you to drive around all day long?

 

[leahgoogle]

Hopefully not much higher! The primary vehicle I drive is a Tundra and I about pass out every time I fill it up...lol.

 

[dez1978]

No wonder Tesla is valued at a trillion dollars. The writing is the on the wall. More and more drivers will be moving to electric vehicles so they don't have to worry about the price of gas.

I read an article the other day about this. You trade off the "worry about the cost of gas" for the planning of where you are going to charge your car. Lots of people commute quite a ways away for work so they'd need to charge. The town I live in, there is not one single place to charge a car. How do you take an EV on a road trip? Do you just plan to drive 300 miles a day or so? That would take forever lol. Most people def wouldn't be able to drive to disney

My wife likes it. "Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas!", but many times I'd rather pump my own.

Once she was in Pennsylvania and called panicked that she was running low on gas. I told her she had more than enough to get home, but she wanted to know what to do if necessary. I told her someone would see her NJ plates, roll their eyes, and then show her how to do it.

Seriously???

Where are you driving that you are putting on 800 miles per week? Does your job require you to drive around all day long?

We went to Branson which is about 3 hours each way. I only really drive about 60 miles a week for work.

 

[MillauFr]

Oregon has the same stupid laws banning self serve gas stations. The wait for gas at Costco in Oregon is twice as long as the Washington State Costco stores.

 

[leahgoogle]

The real reason is most NJ residents are lazy.

Many times I'd rather pump my own gas than wait for the attendant.

And all those excuses are bogus. Unsafe to pump your own gas? How do the residents of the 48 or 49 other states survive the treacherous process?

Concerned about putting gas attendants out of work?? Give me a break. That excuse is most likely used by those who use self-checkout at supermarkets.

I can't imagine not pumping my own gas. Until this thread, I didn't realize that there are actually laws in some states prohibiting it! That would drive me crazy.

 

[Moliphino]

You're correct....and I have always thought it was stupid. It's a "thing" here....like we're proud of it or something. There are t-shirts that say..."Jersey Girls Don't Pump Gas". Ok...but when we lived in other states and had to pump our own gas...it was way faster than having to wait for an attendant.

Plus you don't have to interact with anyone, which is always a plus in my book. Yes, I am one of those people who will just leave and find another gas station if the pump tells me to pay inside.

 

[kdonnel]

I read an article the other day about this. You trade off the "worry about the cost of gas" for the planning of where you are going to charge your car. Lots of people commute quite a ways away for work so they'd need to charge. The town I live in, there is not one single place to charge a car. How do you take an EV on a road trip? Do you just plan to drive 300 miles a day or so? That would take forever lol. Most people def wouldn't be able to drive to disney

People road trip electric cars all the time. There are lots of DC fast chargers that will charge most cars from 10% to 80% in about 45 minutes. If you time those stops with food and bathroom breaks driving electric really adds much less overall time to a trip than many think.

The DC fast chargers are spaced out about every 150-200 miles along the interstates. All across the US.

Range anxiety goes away very quickly once you own your first electric car. I never worry about range.

I wake up every morning with a “full tank”. Well actually only 80% full because unless you need that extra 20% every day it is better for the battery to limit your charge to 80%.

Even at 80% I could do a 200 mile round trip daily commute.

My wife drives the electric car to work and back everyday. We drive it almost exclusively after work and on the weekends for errands and such.

My home charger tracks my usage.

For October we used $15 in electricity to cover 827 miles. A car that gets 30mpg and gas at $3 a gallon would have cost $83 to cover the same 827 miles.

If you have a long commute, electric is the way to go!

 

[dez1978]

People road trip electric cars all the time. There are lots of DC fast chargers that will charge most cars from 10% to 80% in about 45 minutes. If you time those stops with food and bathroom breaks driving electric really adds much less overall time to a trip than many think.

The DC fast chargers are spaced out about every 150-200 miles along the interstates. All across the US.

Range anxiety goes away very quickly once you own your first electric car. I never worry about range.

I wake up every morning with a “full tank”. Well actually only 80% full because unless you need that extra 20% every day it is better for the battery to limit your charge to 80%.

Even at 80% I could do a 200 mile round trip daily commute.

My wife drives the electric car to work and back everyday. We drive it almost exclusively after work and on the weekends for errands and such.

My home charger tracks my usage.

For October we used $15 in electricity to cover 827 miles. A car that gets 30mpg and gas at $3 a gallon would have cost $83 to cover the same 827 miles.

If you have a long commute, electric is the way to go!

See, I just don't want to plan my stops. Nor do I want to stop every 3 hours for 45 min to an hour if I'm driving 12 hours to get somewhere.

Also for what it's worth, there are TWO public places to charge an EV in our states capital. TWO. The only ones within 100 mile radius of me are at hotels and that includes the ones in the capital city. And what do you do if you stop there and the 2 plugs they have are in use? So I think we are a long way from them beins easy for everyone to use. They probably work great in urban areas. But my last job, I drove 85 miles a day. We have a couple of months where the temp is regularly 30 or below for the high. That cold temp puts a significant dent in how far a charge will last. From what I've read, cold cuts the range 40-50%. With no place to plug in, I'd be cutting ir pretty close getting home on those days. And if there was an accident and I was stuck in traffic for an extra hour I might not make it.

Eventually they could be great and make sense for everyone. But its a long way off if you live rurally.

 

[tvguy]

My car I bought like 3 weeks ago has 2500 miles on it lol. I don't even have plates yet.

Yikes, glad I don't have to pay for your insurance or gasoline! Only reason my wife's Toyota had 5,000 miles on it was she had to continue to work in the office the entire pandemic. The car we traded in was driven about 7,500 miles a year, so not taking weekend trips cut the mileage. Toyota dealer said they are seeing a lot of cars in for annual service that have only been driving 1,000 miles.
As for the Ford with 12,000 miles in three years, that is actually higher than the 3,000 miles a year the car it replaced got. We put most of those miles on the first two years before the pandemic, we have a friend who lives 150 miles here and we shuttled her back and forth to cancer treatments here in 2018 and 2019.

 

[dez1978]

Yikes, glad I don't have to pay for your insurance or gasoline! Only reason my wife's Toyota had 5,000 miles on it was she had to continue to work in the office the entire pandemic. The car we traded in was driven about 7,500 miles a year, so not taking weekend trips cut the mileage. Toyota dealer said they are seeing a lot of cars in for annual service that have only been driving 1,000 miles.
As for the Ford with 12,000 miles in three years, that is actually higher than the 3,000 miles a year the car it replaced got. We put most of those miles on the first two years before the pandemic, we have a friend who lives 150 miles here and we shuttled her back and forth to cancer treatments here in 2018 and 2019.

eh, insurance isn't bad. And it's got a diesel engine so it gets great gas mileage compared to the gas engines in them. I got a yukon xl. On our trip to Branson it got 29 mpg, which is a ton better than my honda odyssey got and it's much larger. And my odyseey was a 2018 and had 78k miles on it when I sold it, for a really great price I might add. Thats the price I pay for living in the middle of nowhere and mostly it's 100% worth it. As I previously mentioned, I used to drive around 80 miles a day for work. Now it's about 18. Its all the other driving for sports and groceries and stuff that adds up. We just finshed football season. One kid played at the school which is about 10 miles one way from our house, and had practice 3 nights a week. so theres 60. plus where ever games were. Other kid played for parks and rec which was 15 miles the opposite direction and had practice 2 nights and 1 game a week. So sometimes I was driving home, then to the school and dropping one off, back to town to the other's practice, then back to the school and then home. We are in a totally different season of life than you lol. But also if I recall you live in a big city right? So things aren't very far from you anyway.

 

[kdonnel]

See, I just don't want to plan my stops. Nor do I want to stop every 3 hours for 45 min to an hour if I'm driving 12 hours to get somewhere.

Also for what it's worth, there are TWO public places to charge an EV in our states capital. TWO. The only ones within 100 mile radius of me are at hotels and that includes the ones in the capital city. And what do you do if you stop there and the 2 plugs they have are in use? So I think we are a long way from them beins easy for everyone to use. They probably work great in urban areas. But my last job, I drove 85 miles a day. We have a couple of months where the temp is regularly 30 or below for the high. That cold temp puts a significant dent in how far a charge will last. From what I've read, cold cuts the range 40-50%. With no place to plug in, I'd be cutting ir pretty close getting home on those days. And if there was an accident and I was stuck in traffic for an extra hour I might not make it.

Eventually they could be great and make sense for everyone. But its a long way off if you live rurally.

It really is one of those things you have to experience rather than read about.

I had many of the same worries as you two years ago.

Range anxiety is the biggest hurdle to adoption of EVs.

In modern EVs with 200+ mile ranges it is really not something you worry about even with winter loss which is more in the 20% range for cars without a heat pump and 5-10% for those with a heat pump.

I am so happy paying so much less per mile.
827 miles for $15 = 1.8 cents a mile
827 miles for $83 = 10 cents a mile

Drive 12000 miles a year and you save almost $1000 by driving electric when compared to a 30 mpg car and gas at $3. Raise the price of gas or lower the mpg and the savings are even more dramatic.

Plus the maintenance savings. In 19000 miles my maintenance expenses are $9. I had to buy a cabin air filter at 15000 miles.

The 200+ mile range of todays electric cars coupled with home charging is amazing.

 

[dez1978]

It really is one of those things you have to experience rather than read about.

I had many of the same worries as you two years ago.

Range anxiety is the biggest hurdle to adoption of EVs.

In modern EVs with 200+ mile ranges it is really not something you worry about even with winter loss which is more in the 20% range for cars without a heat pump and 5-10% for those with a heat pump.

I am so happy paying so much less per mile.
827 miles for $15 = 1.8 cents a mile
827 miles for $83 = 10 cents a mile

Drive 12000 miles a year and you save almost $1000 by driving electric when compared to a 30 mpg car and gas at $3. Raise the price of gas or lower the mpg and the savings are even more dramatic.

Plus the maintenance savings. In 19000 miles my maintenance expenses are $9. I had to buy a cabin air filter at 15000 miles.

The 200+ mile range of todays electric cars coupled with home charging is amazing.

I get it for some people. But as you can see, there is a HUGE portion of the state with no place to charge. With kids in the car and traveling for wrestling matches and football, it's not a chance I'm willing to take until there are lots of areas that look like KC and STL. Once you get away from interstate 70, options are few and far between. We've had wrestling tournaments in Palmyra and we are in the central part of the state so there is nothing between us and there. Like I said, rurally, we are a long way from being ready for EV's. And until they make them in giant 4 wheel drive trucks that can get me down a gravel road in a foot of snow, it's not an option lol. I mean sure, I could get one and drive it for "normal"" stuff. But I'd still need a bigger vehicle that can get a minimum of 300 miles reliably with out needing a charge probably at least 15-20 times a year to deal with sports and just regular trips. Like on the weekends during the summer we go to the lake every weekend. The marina does not have anywhere to plug a car in. It's about 85 miles each way. I wouldn't drive around knowing I only had 2 extra gallons of gas to get me to my destination, so I wouldn't do it thinking I had just a little extra charge to get me there either. Esp when there isn't an option between here and there to stop and charge.

 

[ZellyB]

It really is one of those things you have to experience rather than read about.

I had many of the same worries as you two years ago.

Range anxiety is the biggest hurdle to adoption of EVs.

In modern EVs with 200+ mile ranges it is really not something you worry about even with winter loss which is more in the 20% range for cars without a heat pump and 5-10% for those with a heat pump.

I am so happy paying so much less per mile.
827 miles for $15 = 1.8 cents a mile
827 miles for $83 = 10 cents a mile

Drive 12000 miles a year and you save almost $1000 by driving electric when compared to a 30 mpg car and gas at $3. Raise the price of gas or lower the mpg and the savings are even more dramatic.

Plus the maintenance savings. In 19000 miles my maintenance expenses are $9. I had to buy a cabin air filter at 15000 miles.

The 200+ mile range of todays electric cars coupled with home charging is amazing.

Love reading this. Thanks. We are considering an EV. We are fortunate that it wouldn't be our only car but would be mine primarily. I use it mostly for commuting, so charging isn't a problem as I could charge it each night at home. My husband would keep his combustion engine vehicle for now and thus we can use it for any long trips where we are concerned about charging. I took a rode trip with a friend in his Tesla that was around 400 miles round trip. It worked out great as we were able to charge at our destination and that was enough to manage both legs of the trip. Impressive too how the Tesla onboard computer could map out for you when and where to charge on longer trips. There's a lot of changes to infrastructure that needs to happen to really aid in the transition to more EV on the road, but it definitely seems like it could be a good fit for our family.

 

[dez1978]

Love reading this. Thanks. We are considering an EV. We are fortunate that it wouldn't be our only car but would be mine primarily. I use it mostly for commuting, so charging isn't a problem as I could charge it each night at home. My husband would keep his combustion engine vehicle for now and thus we can use it for any long trips where we are concerned about charging. I took a rode trip with a friend in his Tesla that was around 400 miles round trip. It worked out great as we were able to charge at our destination and that was enough to manage both legs of the trip. Impressive too how the Tesla onboard computer could map out for you when and where to charge on longer trips. There's a lot of changes to infrastructure that needs to happen to really aid in the transition to more EV on the road, but it definitely seems like it could be a good fit for our family.

I agree. Eventually it could work. But we have a long way to go before it can' be a viable option for every family. I really don't know anyone where I live who would be ok with only having an EV just due to the lack of places to charge outside of your home.