Gas Prices

In reply to wae :

Your state actually uses the gas tax to maintain the roads? Must be nice. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Oh I forgot about this newish thing in Ohio and the Prius is due for plates by end of month! 

In reply to wae :

Ohio has a registration upcharge for EVs and Hybrids.  $100 for Hybrids and $225 for EVs.  At 38.5 cents a gallon tax, a hybrid would have to burn just about 260 gallons a year less fuel than a non hybrid for the tax revenue to match up.  So, the electric costs the tax equivalent of about 584 gallons of gas tax to register over a gas burner.  At 30 MPG(making an assumption that an electric buyer would get something with decent mileage if not buying an electric), that'd work out to over 17500 miles of driving.

For the hell of, the taxation break even between an Ecoboost FWD Maverick and a Hybrid Maverick would be in the neighborhood of 22700 miles per year, considerably more than the average amount driven in a year.  

So, Ohio's registration tax likely costs hybrid and electric users as much or more in taxes than they'd pay using a gas-powered vehicle.  At least they still get the advantage of not having to buy as much (or any) gas.

Edit - because I got the Electric registration fee wrong originally.

I filled up at $4.62 a gallon at the WalMart station near my house. The Valero down the street where I usually fill up was $4.80.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

As far as I could find, taxes are far less than that, $100, and $225.  If they are the higher numbers you quoted, then it is unlikely all but a few hybrid and electric owners will break even on taxes.

Ohio... $100 & $225

In reply to eastsideTim :

Those were the numbers given to me by a (now former) Volt owner, I did not double check.

He sold the Volt not for the taxes but because he sold like 10 of his cars last year and rhat happened to be one of them.  He is down, IIRC, to a Monte Carlo, New Beetle, and his new Maverick.

The NB is nuts, apparently it is around 400hp...

We rented a Wrangler Unlimited in the keys and at least once paid $5.70/gallon. That made the 15mpg pretty painful. Worth it, but painful. 
 

I pay $200/yr extra to register my Volt. Since we drive like 5000 miles per year that really stinks. We way overpay. Thanks Ohio!

I usually fill up twice a week. 

In reply to SV reX :

Ouch. That's about what I spend on gas in a month, depending on how many biking trips I make.

An EV mileage tax would be fairly easy to implement in PA as we have annual safety (and emissions) inspections where the inspection station records your odometer reading. All that would be required is PennDOT running that database through an algorithm and spitting out a bill to the vehicle owner after each inspection, probably tied to the annual registration. Registration fees are "mostly" graded by weight - Class 1 @ $67/year to Class 25 @ $2417. My Cummins 2500 truck (class 3) was $153/year (now $177)  -which was painful for a truck I rarely drove. Cars are a lot less at $39.  Amusingly, my giant E350 diesel van is titled as a "station wagon" so despite it's 8500 lbs GVW, I pay $39/year.

There have been PA House Bills and other rumblings about adding an EV tax or moving away from a fuel tax to a mileage based tax, but so far it doesn't look like anything has been agreed upon. 

Classic and Antique is a "one and done" $75 registration. It would be interesting to see if or how they address road use taxes on these cars if they move away from a fuel tax, especially since Antique cars do not get annual inspections and are essentially out of the system.  My WAG is the administration costs of taxing them for road road use would be more than the actual revenue. 

In reply to eastsideTim :

It's almost as if they're incentivizing everyone to go out and grey market import a VW Polo or something...

volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to eastsideTim :

It's almost as if they're incentivizing everyone to go out and grey market import a VW Polo or something...

Hmm, Harlequin Polos are old enough to import now.    Wonder what one of those would cost to get here.

$4.69/gallon here in Denver.  Diesel is $5.29 but my wifes Cayenne diesel gets twice the gas mileage that my Land Cruiser does, so it's totally worth it.  Wish Toyota had sold the V8 turbo diesel Land Cruiser here, I would've bought one.  I usually drive the Land Cruiser to work because I bring my dog with me.  When he stays home I ride my KTM (55mpg) or drive the 911 (22mpg?)

SV reX said:

I usually fill up twice a week. 

Ouch!

In reply to SV reX :

If you could find one (very big if), would it make sense for you to trade in for a F150 Powerboost?  If you are burning that much gas twice a week, it might be worth it, even with a big jump in purchase price.

Im hearing that there might be a 'tax holiday' to provide some relief at the pumps. Ive heard, and yall can tell me if Im wrong, that it's 4%. Considering the lowest numbers around here, thats about 17c drop in price. It's gone up how much in the past six months? And now we're getting releif by a whopping 17c?

Open up the pipeline - create jobs, be [more] energy independent, and lower our costs.

hybridmomentspass said:

Im hearing that there might be a 'tax holiday' to provide some relief at the pumps. Ive heard, and yall can tell me if Im wrong, that it's 4%. Considering the lowest numbers around here, thats about 17c drop in price. It's gone up how much in the past six months? And now we're getting releif by a whopping 17c?

Open up the pipeline - create jobs, be [more] energy independent, and lower our costs.

 

What pipeline are you referring to, and what about all the job loss from the reduced need for truck drivers?

Prices starting to drop here in N. Florida, down .10 a gallon from last week at some stations.  All the proposed pipelines running balls out won't amount to a hill of beans if they don't increase refinery capacity, so there's a bottleneck wrt gas prices.   As it is, the US is basically energy independent and has been for awhile now as we are a net exporter of oil, and prices are high enough for the shale oil and fracking producers who shut down during the pandemic slowdown to restart production, but will that happen?   A gas tax holiday is a nice thought, but it won't do much of anything if the global market prices stay high, and as you say, will only amount to a drop in the bucket even if the Fed and states apply it at the same time.  Right now the only thing that will cause global market prices to drop appreciably is a decline in demand (or an uptick in supply), which it appears is starting to happen.  

We've got pretty substantial domestic refinery abilities, but we also export a large amount of refined petro products as well. 

If we're paying $5/gal, someone we export to is paying $10/gal. 

The only way to prevent that is to go Venezuelan on the refineries, and tell them they can only sell in the USA. If that were to happen, they'd probably raise prices due to such manipulations. 

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/us-exports-even-more-oil-as-domestic-gasoline-diesel-prices-spike

In reply to pheller :

I'm not positive that I remember this correctly, but I think we actually made it illegal to export crude back in the 70's and only recently (last 6 or 7 years?) made exports out of the US legal.

mtn said:

hybridmomentspass said:

Im hearing that there might be a 'tax holiday' to provide some relief at the pumps. Ive heard, and yall can tell me if Im wrong, that it's 4%. Considering the lowest numbers around here, thats about 17c drop in price. It's gone up how much in the past six months? And now we're getting releif by a whopping 17c?

Open up the pipeline - create jobs, be [more] energy independent, and lower our costs.

 

What pipeline are you referring to, and what about all the job loss from the reduced need for truck drivers?

Keystone, for example.

There's PLENTY of work for truck drivers, I seem to recall a lack of some things because we didnt have enough guys driving our goods (if/when they even got off the cargo ships).

Even with pipelines like the aforemention Keystone, there will be tanker truck drivers needed.

eastsideTim said:

In reply to SV reX :

If you could find one (very big if), would it make sense for you to trade in for a F150 Powerboost?  If you are burning that much gas twice a week, it might be worth it, even with a big jump in purchase price.

That would normally make sense, but not in my case. My company pays for all my fuel, so any change (even to total electric) would be a big increase for me. 
 

One day it will make sense, but not now. 

wae said:

In reply to pheller :

I'm not positive that I remember this correctly, but I think we actually made it illegal to export crude back in the 70's and only recently (last 6 or 7 years?) made exports out of the US legal.

Yep. Back in 2015. From: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/12/16/oil-exports-ban-congress/77420824/

"A bill to lift the 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports, changing the dynamic of U.S. producers in the world energy market, could be pushed through Congress by week's end thanks to a deal reached this week.

The measure was folded into a massive tax-and-spending bill that averted another government shutdown. The move was favored by Republican lawmakers and oil industry leaders.

In return, Democrats won a five-year extension of credits for wind and solar energy producers and a renewal of a land and water conservation fund and nixed attempts to roll back President Obama's environmental regulations."

Refined products were not included in that ban. 

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/01/08/u-s-oil-exports-have-been-banned-for-40-years-is-it-time-for-that-to-change/

"But not everyone's convinced. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has argued that the export ban was put in place back in the 1970s to "protect U.S. consumers from volatility and price spikes." Allowing more exports, he argued, might cause U.S. gasoline prices to rise and hurt American consumers. And some environmental groups are leery of boosting fossil-fuel production even further."

"The relevant laws here date back to the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which directed the president to ban crude oil exports except in select circumstances.

The exceptions: Over the years, the Commerce Department has handed out export licenses for certain types of oil. Crude from Alaska's Cook Inlet gets a pass. So does oil that goes through the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline. So does any oil that's shipped to Canada for consumption there. So does heavy oil from certain fields in California. There are also exceptions for re-exporting foreign oil and for small swaps with Mexico. But all this added up to a modest 67,000 barrels per day in 2011.

Meanwhile, there's no ban on exporting oil once it's been refined into gasoline or diesel fuel. In fact, U.S. refineries are now shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel abroad:"

hybridmomentspass said:

mtn said:

hybridmomentspass said:

Im hearing that there might be a 'tax holiday' to provide some relief at the pumps. Ive heard, and yall can tell me if Im wrong, that it's 4%. Considering the lowest numbers around here, thats about 17c drop in price. It's gone up how much in the past six months? And now we're getting releif by a whopping 17c?

Open up the pipeline - create jobs, be [more] energy independent, and lower our costs.

 

What pipeline are you referring to, and what about all the job loss from the reduced need for truck drivers?

Keystone, for example.

Keystone would do nothing but help Canadian drillers export their oil outside of North America - and we'd get a slice of the pie. 

The only way fuel prices drop:
A) a ban on gasoline and diesel exports  
B) government owned refineries that flood the domestic fuel supply with cheap gas. 

So long as our fuel is sold on the global market, it will be impacted by global demand and its respective global price. 

Here is a good article on the current situation in the US oil industry.

I can't really post any specifics or even the title because it's obviously has some very political aspects to it.  It seems like a pretty objective overview though:

Current Oil Industry Article (Yahoo Finance)

There is a comment in there that seems to explain the refinery situation a bit:

...global refining capacity has fallen by 3 million barrels a day since 2020, which is about a 4% decline. In the United States, refining capacity has fallen by about 1 million barrels per day, or roughly 6%. With global demand for oil and oil products nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, that marginal refining shortfall is enough to create bottlenecks and jack up prices.

and this tidbit:

...restart refineries deemed to be money losers during the depths of 2020 while also asking those firms to invest in more capacity with no guarantee prices will stay high in a way such that they’ll earn a return on that investment.

There is also a linked article on US energy independence:

https://news.yahoo.com/the-myth-of-us-energy-independence-223017557.html

...With regard to oil, the main component in gasoline, the U.S. consumes more than it produces, and has for decades. Flatly stated, the United States is not oil-independent, and hasn’t been since the early days of oil production...