big trucks have big tanks to go long distances.
It’s $4.66 a gallon here.
Yeah this is the extended range, max tow package. It came with it, it wasn’t a feature I selected. Not having to get gas very often is great, but when you do…
Cruising around long distance 22-24mpg, a lot of city driving I get 17-19mpg. That is honestly better than the last Tacoma I was driving. pretty crazy.
Wow, math homework again…
Okay, that’s around 10l/100km… our small car uses 7. So it’s actually not that bad. 
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But the big difference is the distances we need to drive in the USA compared to the EU. If I go to my favorite Soaring site, it is a 2000Km round trip.
More like
22-24mpg => 9 - 10l/100
17-19mpg => 14 - 19l/100
I mean… most recent vehicles here are around 5-7L/100 for road usage (at 130km/h mind you, not 100), and probably 7-8L/100km in cities
Then again I guess there’s no point comparing an F150 consumption to a Golf…. 
Note: man this conversion is really hard and counter intuitive… higher MPG is lower l/100km for us >_<
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Then again, ie in France, if I want to go surfing at Biaritz beach from Paris, that’s a 1800km (and 20 hours) round trip too .
Not what I’d call “neighbourhood” by any mean
I guess you could go to the atlantic coast which is more like 800km round trip, but that’s not with the same weather conditions
Aside froml those “long trips”, I guess commuting is a lot longer in the US though, is it?
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I think you have a conversion error there… I get 12.3 - 13.8 liters/100km for 17-19mpg
I had a suburban for a while that had a 40 gal tank and got 13 mpg. At the time the pump would stop you at $80 or $100 before you would have to swipe the card a second time to top it off.
My last 2 weeks home I filled up 3 times…
$4.97/gal - $150
$5.29/gal - $177
$5.19/gal - $165
That’s the most fuel I have burned in 2 weeks home in a LONG time, and of course when fuel is the most expensive lol. 36 gallon tank in my crew cab dually
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I have to monitor all of this for work since our raw materials are sourced from oil/naptha, and it’s way more complicated than that.
Right now our oil and gas prices are priced on the futures market and are essentially being pulled down from what they really should be. This week when the last tanker shows up the pipeline starts getting squeezed despite high North American production. Since we don’t actually see a scarcity yet they hover $4/gal, diesel is harder hit at over $5.50/gal right now and going up. Without the speculation market it should be up to $6-8/gal which is scary territory, and where we might be heading.
Intermediates and derivatives of oil/naptha all the way up to polypropylene and polyethylene are being loaded onto tankers in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time in 25 years with destinations of Europe and later Asia. The market is tightening up so fast that EU/Asia is willing to purchase at a premium while North America is still in full production, that puts the US directly in the world market that is so acutely affected - so prices go up for everyone.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better, feel so bad for the farmers that depend on fertilizer from natural gas in the Middle East. There is usually less than a 28 day window to get the fertilizer in the ground and will see greatly diminishing yield without it, get it on too late and you burn the crops. At that point it’s not about cost, it’s about producing enough food for the world to eat.
If it’s a bad hurricane season in the Gulf this year we are so f’d.
….sorry to be such a sourpuss, had to give something similar 3 times today.
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Personally, I appreciate hearing grounded perspectives and concerns from community members like yourself that either work in the oil industry, or close to it.
For levity… Alt energy, and alt propulsion perspectives are welcome too. Even stable 115 isotopes… Cheers!
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I appreciate the l/km spec so much. It is really difficult to compare 15 mpg, 25 mpg, 35 mpg cars, but if it were inversed:
15 mpg → 6.7g/100mi
25 mpg → 4.0g/100mi
35 mpg → 2.9g/100mi
15,25,35 can seem like not a big deal. But the inverse feels much more impactful.
EVs, I pay $0.11/kWh at home. I paid $0.48/kWh on a recent road trip.
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Me too, it’s good to hear from others with the expertise. Plastics may pay for my paycheck, but my wife drives the EV to work, I work from home, and we’ve only filled the Subaru twice this year (last time was this weekend, $50 even). Also have a 16.2 kWh ground mount solar system, geothermal heat pump, and a 100% electric household (no NG line propane pig).
Planting the gardens now for a staggered harvest, can’t wait for salsa/bruschetta season!
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To answer the question - currently local price for diesel is AUD 3.30 per litre which I think translates to around US 9.00 per gallon.
I’m not sure that “need” is quite the correct term. As someone who has just spent a month away in Australia and only visited one state, travelling 4500k’s in the process, I think I am qualified to comment on need! 
People make the mistake of thinking Europe is small - it’s not as large as Aus or USA, but it’s a large area comprising a lot of smaller countries. For instance, the Netherlands and Germany are right next to each other, but when we drove from the Netherlands to @Tokoloshe’s place it was more than 800 k’s round trip.
Our fuel tax has also been temporarily halved - now 30c or so off but that’s reflected in the price above.
I’m not so sure. Typically yes I think, but when we were based in Alsace, most of the guys working in the hire boat base commuted 60-80k per day, which really surprised us.
In Aus and particularly where we live, transport infrastructure is poor, and distances relatively large. Yesterday we drove to a specialist appointment 50k away and I’d say that’s not typical… until we think about how much we actually do drive.
That’s the curious thing for me, it seems that here although all have been bought on the futures market, the retail price reacts instantly going up, and is very slow to go down.
We tend to forget that fuel is not a right, it’s just a commercial product, so as long as we continue to place ourselves at the mercy of the market that’s exactly where we will be.
Electric vehicles are only as good as the infrastructure that powers them too. The only person I know who has genuine off-grid capability is currently replacing his panels and batteries as they are at end of servicable life - I don’t know the current cost, but the initial installation was $80,000 Aus - so his power has cost around $8k per year! In that ten years, tech has improved and the new batteries should live twice as long.
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Agreed on all points. To clarify that difference though,
The US market is different because we are so delayed we haven’t seen any actual shortage in any market, just the stock market betting on futures and playing a lot on the president’s word. In the EU the impacts are more ‘real’. My sister division in the EU are already in Force Majeure and shutting down olefin crackers. Pain will be felt, and the futures market there realizes that.
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Oh yes, I forgot to mention that Australia has a one month emergency reserve, and as far as I can tell, one week of that is already gone! (reports are confusing and mostly not based on fact) Our government is saying that we have supply secured until the end of May. Last time I looked that was six weeks away.
Interesting times.
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Often cited (incorrectly) as an ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”.
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That is why I like having a 36 gallon tank in my F150. When I drive to and from North Dakota it is great being able to drive 600-700 miles between fill ups.
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I drove 35 miles/56km one way to work for 38 years.
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