Cross-cultural enquiry

Posted on April 5, 2005 by acb

I was reading a rather lucid prediction of disaster for America when the oil supply gets tighter and discovered that one measure of the apocalypse was that you might find it cost $50 to fill your car. I don’t know the size of American petrol tanks. Mine holds 66 litres. the last time I filled it, it cost me

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14 Responses to Cross-cultural enquiry

  1. Mrs Tilton says:
    April 5, 2005 at 10:50 am

    So infrequently do I drive that I can’t recall exactly what it costs to fill up the oul’ tank, but I believe I will not go too far amiss if I reply: quite a bit more than 50 American.

    It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. When in America, I am invariably astounded and delighted at the cheapness of ‘gas’. At those prices, why stop at filling the tank? Put some into those 10-gallon 7-11 Big Gulp cups and splash gaily about with the stuff!

    Though I appreciate that Americans may be shocked to see that they are now paying almost a quarter of the price I must pay, mein Mitleid h

  2. Andrew says:
    April 5, 2005 at 5:53 pm

    I don’t recall ever spending more than $30 to fill a tank – but gas tanks here are small and the cars are thirsty.

    Recent-ish historical data.

  3. jim says:
    April 5, 2005 at 6:02 pm

    My tank holds 15 US gallons which is approximately 57 litres. I fill it when the needle shows 1/4 full, which is actually about 1/3 full. So I add about 10 gallons ( approx 38 litres) for about $20.

    It was not so long ago such a fill cost about $10.

  4. acb says:
    April 5, 2005 at 7:42 pm

    Gracious! that is really astonishingly cheap. I suppose I only fill this car about once a month, most winters, since if I go to London or the airport I use the train, and I don’t often go anywhere else except to fish. So it’s dfficult to remember how dependent most people feel on their cars. I think we are actually more dependent on lorries, but that’s another problem.

    Thanks for the data link. That is wonderful, and really informative about prices all over the USA if one digs around.

    I know there is a lurker in New Zealand. You can come out now, mary, and tell us what a tank full costs, if Sean doesn’t beat you to it.

    As I understand, there is much less price elasticity in the USA simply because taxes are so low. If the price of crude shot up to $100 a barrel it would double at the pumps too. But I find it much easier to imagine a world without many cars than a world without cheap and ubiquitous transport of goods. The latter would clearly be the main effect of any drastic energy shortage or attack of green prudence.

  5. H. E. Baber says:
    April 6, 2005 at 1:57 am

    It’s roughly $25 to fill my roughly 10 gallon tank–and the gas in my area is the most expensive in the country I hear. Mercifully I can’t convert liters to gallons or pounds to dollars readily in my head so after cheerfully driving around in the UK paying for gas by credit card I don’t get the hit until my Visa bill comes.

    The linked article IMHO was dead on–unrealistically low fuel prices are the great American sacred cow and could pull down the current regime.

    I drive a Nissan Sentra “subcompact” and am tempted to get self-righteous about SUVs–I can’t even see why anyone would want to drive one of those things. But in fairness popular interest in low gas prices isn’t all piggishness–the way many American cities are laid out, effective public transportation is close to impossible, and living close to work, in ultra-yuppified city center areas, is unaffordable and impossible for families with kids. My drive to work takes 20-25 minutes–by public transportation it would be almost 2 hours on a local bus, trolley with transfer and then a two mile walk from the trolley station.

  6. Paul says:
    April 6, 2005 at 3:12 am

    Costs about US$30 to fill my 14 gallon tank (I run it down to fumes).

    Interestingly, gas/petrol prices vary widely: West coasters like me pay more than East coasters, for no compelling reason (shipping costs? Huh. We have ports and refineries here, so that’s a non-starter.)

    As suspected, there’s a “website dedicated to tracking this”:http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgas_index.asp.

  7. Bob Kegel says:
    April 6, 2005 at 3:18 am

    Here in western Washington State regular gas is selling for $2.15 a gallon. It would cost $37.48 or about

  8. acb says:
    April 6, 2005 at 8:07 am

    I only ever buy gas, as opposed to petrol, on expenses, so the price never really registers. But I do understand the point about how essential cars are almost everywhere. The awful thing is that one has no choice but be piggy and the poorer you are in the US and Yurp the less chance you have to tread lightly on the planet. Your commute to work will be longer; your time to cook and shop for decent food will be shorter. The things you buy will need replacing more often, and are more likely to have been shipped half way arond the planet.

    You have to be rich to buy locally grown food, locally made clothes, and even locally made cars these days.

  9. H. E. Baber says:
    April 7, 2005 at 2:16 am

    It’s really, really tough to live an ecologically responsible life if you aren’t rich and/or have kids. When mine were little I had to truck them to daycare–very difficult without a car.

    A lot of the “conservative” anger about environmentalism and “simple lifestyles” comes from working class people who just don’t have the bucks, or the time to live “simply.” If you’re a dual income professional couple with no kids you can live close to work and walk or bike, and have time to cook. If you’re relatively poor and have kids you’ve got to live way out and depend on cheap fast food to buy a little time.

  10. John Wilkins says:
    April 7, 2005 at 6:39 am

    Here in Australia the cost is around AUS$1.05/litre. Hence around $US50 for a 66l tank. But I ride a motorbike anyway…

  11. Tim Haas says:
    April 7, 2005 at 2:06 pm

    I live in New Jersey, which has the cheapest gas in the U.S. (and by law the station attendants must pump it — no getting wet in the rain or dribbling petrol on one’s shoes). The prices here have just crested $2 per gallon, so it’ll cost me about $28 the next time I fill up, and that will take me about 400 miles.

    SUVs and pickups, which have large (sometimes dual) tanks, would cost upward of $100 to fill at this point.

  12. Jake Malone says:
    April 7, 2005 at 7:54 pm

    Tank is 24 US gallons, filled it from empty yesterday for a total of 52.00 USD.

  13. PZ Myers says:
    April 8, 2005 at 4:53 pm

    I drive a compact car: 10g (37L) tank, so it’s a bit more than $20 to fill it. That’s good for about 6 hours or 300 miles of driving, and is about what it takes to get me from my small town to the nearest metropolitan area and back.

  14. Rupert says:
    April 10, 2005 at 2:12 am

    “You have to be rich to buy locally grown food, locally made clothes, and even locally made cars these days.”

    I guess that’s the law of mass production pulling everything into ever bigger (and thus statistically more distant) points of production. Perhaps there really will be a shoe event horizon. There has to be a pivot point, though; trying to buy locally produced food on the Holloway Road will be tricky, but then I don’t know how many companies are shipping Brazilian-sourced baby sweetcorn to Eritrea.

    I’m up near Ely this weekend. The fields are under plastic, growing early lettuce. My parents tell me this is as a result of Tesco adopting a ‘local where possible’ buying policy. If we really are past peak production on oil, then this is where I expect change to be most rapid.

    R

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