President Joe Biden is taking fresh steps to help keep gas prices from climbing. For Republicans to see this as “disgusting” and “disgraceful” is bizarre.
I actually just want permanently higher gas prices like in Europe to facilitate the move to EVs. The US needs to break the addiction to oil.
A lot of people will be even poorer increasing the price of gas in Europe, most working class people cant switch to an EV just because,my family (myself included, but now i live in a big city where i dont need a car anymore) purchase usually 15+ year old cars, and there is no decent public transportation in that zone. I know you just want easy upvotes saying stupid things like that, but really, viewpoints like that are harmful towards the working class, if you want to facilitate the move towards EVs what you need is cheaper EVs, and tbh, fuck that bullshit and instead push toward better public transportation in rural areas instead of keeping the push in personal vehicles that are as wasteful.
Ideally, you tax the hell out of fossil fuels then redistribute it to the poor. The rich and middle class cut their usage and/or switch to EVs and the poor can get by while viable alternatives to driving are implemented and EV prices come down.
Also EV structures in the cities are not good because most people live in places with no garages or driveways. Better public transportation is the way.
viewpoints like that are harmful towards the working class
News flash: The working class in most of Europe is doing much better than the working class in the US. And that’s with much higher gas prices and higher taxes.
They also drive more EVs and have a heck of a lot higher quality public transportation.
Hm so if the median working class as a whole in the EU is doing better than the working class of the USA its okay the fuck the working class of the rural zones in spain which as i said lack public transportation or access to expensive EVs? Lmao.
As someone who has lived in Europe for more than two decades, I can tell you that most rural zones in the EU do not lack public transportation. EVs become cheaper when it’s the norm. Lmao
Just lol, seriously, have you seen the state in the rural zones of spain? Do you think a train or a bus every two hours is going to let people get a job outside their town with less than 10k habitants? Even in my hometown with 40k+ habitants only has a single (1!) train an hour.
Most people from a working class in spain having the minimum salary which is 1100€ (thats if you have a full time job in a country with 27+% unemployment among the young) while you are paying in most zones already 700€+ rent which is more than 50% of your salary (if you even have a salary). I can assure you that no one even with the minimum salary if they have a salary and paying a rent of 700+ is going to be able to get credit to buy a 10-15k plus EV. Not even 5-8+k to get a really cheap second hand one. So please, before you speak to this level of bullshit read a bit or look at data at least, your situation or the little you have seen does not represent the reality.
I know nothing about Spain. I’ve lived in several northern European countries, and it’s nothing like you attempt to describe.
That’s probably why they said they were talking about Spain over and over again.
What im attempting to describe which is data you can look yourself if you cared enough, google 5 minutes for the minimum spanish wage, price of rent in any 10k+ habitants town and the state of public transportation in rural spain and the average age of spanish cars
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Spain 700€+ month for 1 bedroom outside of the cities
https://wageindicator.org/salary/minimum-wage/spain 1134€ month minimum salary with a 27% unemployment among young
https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-age-of-eu-vehicle-fleet-by-country/ 13.5 years the average age of spanish cars
You say im attempting to describe as if i was making up what i see on my country everyday and is shown by any data if you look for, your experience on the rural zone of a rich northern European country does not represent any country of the south like Portugal, Spain, Italy… So yeah, instead of saying stupid things like oil should be more expensive across all Europe maybe say that hopefully the states and the european union make EVs cheaper for the working class and invest in public transportation in rural areas more ;)
If you are not in Germany, Netherlands, France and a few other its all a shithole. You were giga comfy
The US needs better public transit everywhere, not just EVS.
Definitely agree. But there are a lot people in the US who have been conditioned to whine about “communist public transportation” every time it’s brought up, so it never really happens. EVs are a good middle ground to get many of these people onboard with more environmentally friendly transportation.
That is an inverse progressive tax. The lower income you are, the higher % of your income you pay.
It’s essentially a tax on the poor trying to subsidize renewables. If the US had viable alternatives, maybe I’d support this. I don’t think the poor need more taxes right now, though.
The word you’re looking for is regressive
You’re right
If you return the tax to everyone as a dividend, then it becomes progressive, while still encouraging less polluting options
What other countries do is build viable public transportation to counter.
How much will climate change cost the poor?
Trust me marginally reducing the gasoline burned by the working class commuting to work will not make a difference. It’s political theater masquerading as activism.
Go after the largest items. Build solar, wind farms, nuclear power. Once we have 90% of the power in this country being generated without carbon emissions then maybe we can talk about the pennies worth from gasoline.
Because right now 40% is natural gas and 20% is coal. Think of all the A/C units in the whole country, all of the Google data servers beeping and whirring, and every single Tesla supercharger station and behind them is a giant plume of black smoke sinking up to the atmosphere.
That comes after the election.
We are being devastated by the higher gas prices. People don’t have the money nor the infrastructure is given to move to EV. Even if one does have money for EV, charging stations are extremely rare and you WILL find yourself stranded if you attempt any long drive unless you have a “old” combustion engine car or an hybrid both affected by the higher prices.
You don’t want higher prices on gas with 0 attempt to actually make EV viable, trust me.
The “extreme” rarity you claim for charging stations is a myth, possibly propagated by the petrol industry. Plugshare offers accurate information regarding the location of charging stations (https://www.plugshare.com/). And the cool thing about that is there are both commercial and home/ office stations, with more coming online all the time. It’s kinda good that EM bobbled the supercharger thing, so it encourages more groups to start providing chargers. The great thing about Plugshare and ABRP (abetterrouteplanner.com/) is that it makes it very easy to see and plan for your next charge. Tho’ I do agree that the way to go is make the E-charging cheaper, not to make the petrol more expensive, yet.
Hm, there’s no public charging within 100 miles of me. But there is within what I assume is max range at Montana winter temperatures (~150 miles?) .
Thank you for posting this. I’m absolutely not in the position to buy a new car right now. But, it doesn’t seem like traveling across the state would be very difficult if I did purchase an EV. (I have to drive up to five hours one way for certain medical care)
LoL, and I would never suggest buying a new car. They lose too much value just driving off the lot, and in the first 2 years. I’m not sure what the current ‘sweet spot’ is, but unless one is ‘fuck you rich’ I couldn’t understand why buying a new car makes sense.
Thanks for showing me where I live there is a singular small gas station within multiple kilometers with a couple EV charging stations 😂 I only find many if I go to a bigger city. In fact I do see them when I go to the city, and always empty.
E-charging is even more expensive then petrol here, so even hybrids that can charge people that own then never do so as going with just petrol is so much cheaper for how it lasts on the road.
I hate to tell you most people aren’t traveling more than 300 miles a day and most ev have ranges in excess of that.
Your trying to poke holes in Swiss cheese and claim it’s less tasty because of it.
Like 99.9% will be less than 300/d. And one can charge at home, with a 120v or 240v cable. It takes longer than a DCFC, but functionally one arrives home, plugs in, and forgets about it till one needs to drive somewhere. Home charging is being about 1x/wk, for my family. And as much as I like my EV, I frequently remind myself that every hour driving is an hour that I’m not biking.
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I’m way more worried about where the energy is coming from and what the true cost of storage is, rather than where I get it from. Every conversion/storage has an energy and materials cost. As bad as petrol burning is, I have to imagine coal burning + transfer loss has to be about as bad. Not to mention the nature of lithium cells.
We don’t need more charging stations to make EV viable, we need more nuclear power plants and cleaner battery tech first.
At worst it is about a wash. Combined cycle power plants are very efficient, much more efficient than even the best ICE engines. You pay for that efficiency with space and equipment weight which is why you don’t see that in vehicles. Even with transmission losses and power train losses in EVs your miles per unit of burnt fuel is about as good or better. Mix some green energy in there and you are coming out positive.
And short of some absurd level of intervention from a conservative government, the grid is only going to get greener in the future, so an EV bought now will become progressively less carbon intensive over time.
What you are saying is that you should invest in infrastructure for electric cars instead of subsidising the oil industry again?
Again? They never stopped.
Even if one does have money for EV, charging stations are extremely rare and you WILL find yourself stranded if you attempt any long drive unless you have a “old” combustion engine car or an hybrid both affected by the higher prices.
Bullshit. My wife and I did a two week road trip up/down 2/3 of the east coast in our Tesla last year, and not once did we have a problem charging. Half the hotels we stayed in had level 2 chargers that didn’t cost us anything to use, and Teslas SuperCharger network was perfectly reliable. We also found more than one parking garage with free chargers while parked.
Now that NACS has been adopted as the open SAE J3400 standard and most EV manufacturers have announced support for it, the rollout of more third party fast chargers should start ramping up soon. And with Tesla open up Superchargers to other EVs it’s getting easier and easier to charge.
small town, middle of nowhere in the upper midwest. an hour away from basically anything other than walmart and a few fast food joints, and more than our fair share of climate change-denying maga morons.
we have multiple locations with chargers.
Your EV experience was significantly different from mine.
I recently did a 5 day trip from London to Scotland in a non-Tesla ev and we frequently had trouble with charging. Finding charging stations that worked was a challenge, they were often offline or just wouldn’t charge our car for some reason, or were the slowest chargers that took hours.
We were pretty caution with our range so it usually wasn’t a problem to find another one within 20 minutes or so, but it was definitely a little stress inducing and was pretty painful overall.
A bonus is that we stayed a little longer in places we wouldn’t have while the car charged and saw some neat things.
Good for you
Desperately hanging on to old things is not a long term solution. Petition your government to facilitate a decrease on the reliance of oil, not to help you keep it the same.
The tech is not there though. Most of the USA is rural. It needs to be heavily adopted in the large cities first before trying a one size fits all and rip off the bandaid approach.
And that is exactly why technological development should be supported, rather than using that money to desperately keep the old ways. Pouring money into temporarily subsidizing a finite resource at the expense of investments into the future is ultimate short-term thinking. Is it really so bad if fuel prices creep up over time? This of course assumes that this money would be used for more productive ways otherwise, which is not a safe bet.
If you stop the subsidizes, it’s not going to creep up slowly, its going to shock the entire system. We have plenty of funds that can be used for EV adoption.
Desperately hanging on old things is what has been done in my country, Italy, for decades. Most of the population is conservative.
Not that our money even allow moving on. Most cars I see on the road are 15+ years old.
In Italy the combination of solar panels on your roof in combination with an EV should imply that you pay very little in electricity and fuel bills. There should be a decent group of households for which such an investment pays off.
And on the other side of the same coin you have suburbanites driving 2 ton vehicles that drive 20 miles to the gallon.
So higher gas prices will primarily require a lot of people to abandon the “who cares about mileage” mindset and start driving actually normal vehicles.
Also plenty of EVs have 300+ mile ranges and that will suffice for 95% of travel in the US too. Insert proper plug in hybrids in the mix that do 50 miles electric and probably range anxiety is something of the past.
Remaining on the teet of big oil means big oil will keep sucking up corporate welfare while devastating our planet.
Also public transport needs to improve. Dedicated buslanes to bypass traffic jams in big cities means that each bus takes dozens of cars off the road.
Not much can be done if what most people can afford is a 15+ years old used car.
Also what I’ve seen from dedicated bus lanes in my city is them just being used by cars and bikes as overtake lane or as a sidewalk extention from pedestrians. Also trains need to be much more than once an hour or worse.
Cost is a factor for sure… that is where the government can step in. Mandate more affordable vehicles. In the Netherlands the subsidies on new EVs where now limited to 50k sticker price set to be reduced again. To guide the market.
And buslanes should just be more intensively used then… but it starts by showing that public transport is a viable alternative.
Train infra in the US is just hub and spoke… the interconnects are missing between the suburbs.
The infrastructure is much better in the US than you’re suggesting. I’ve taken numerous long road trips in my EV (and it’s not a Tesla, so not using the supercharger network) and I’ve never once been stranded or even had to wait longer than a 10-15 minutes before I’m able to plug in and charge on the rare time the chargers are busy, and I’m talking 2000+ mile trips. Could it be better? Absolutely. But it’s nowhere near as bad as you are trying to make it.
You are assuming I live in the US. i am not, I am in Italy and this comment thread was about European infrastructures
Well considering you were responding to someone who was specifically speaking about the US and you didn’t specify that, yeah I think that is a reasonable assumption.
I guarantee most of the complainers drive around dumbass pickup trucks as their everyday vehicle, filling up at $250 every 2 weeks. I have problems feeling sorry for them.
LoL, our power company has a ‘pilot program’ for EV charging overnight, the price drops to $0.03/kW as a way of encouraging off peak charging. A decent sized EV battery has 77kWh. 77x 0.03 = $2.10 for a full charge. Just sayin’.
Most people that do not drive EVs vastly underestimate how much they can save in fuel and maintenance costs.
A good point. Apparently this is the case. Mechanically speaking they are much simple vehicles, even if they have all the fancy bells and whistles. I so would love to see a Toyota Hi-Lux EV, with manual windows, and the simplest most basic, just move shit around in 3D. Simple, light weight, and efficient. BYD is attempting to drive things (pun intended) in that direction.
Pickup trucks are rare in Europe
One could argue this was true a few years ago, but EVs are more viable now.
“How does this dying old man keep outsmarting us?”
-Republicans, constantly
I’m not US, don’t have the context, so how is lowering gas prices in face of climate crysis a smart move?
For better or worse, our economy still runs on fossil fuels, and people have real lives and families to take care of. There has to be a balance between battling climate change and being able to provide for families and keep the economy going. The problem is that everyone has a difference of opinion on where that balance is, and the harder it is for people to put food on the table, the less likely they are to support climate change efforts. Also, the harder it is to put food on the table, the more likely voters are to vote out whoever is in office.
Biden right now is trying to keep prices in a range that voters are at least willing to accept. Republicans aren’t against it because they suddenly care about the climate change crisis. They’re against it because any perceived “win” Biden gets lowers the chances of Trump returning to power and basically taking a shit all over efforts to fight climate change.
Republican energy policy is to let oil barons do whatever they want, destroy whatever they want for new drilling and pay as little taxes as possible.
Democrat energy strategy is to regulate oil, preserve delicate ecosystems by banning oil/gas exploration wells and fracking in those areas and investing in expanded green energy policy.
The political problem for Dems is that ballooning prices at the gas pump are very unpopular with moderate/undecided voters (reality is that almost everyone in this country has to fill up their car tank regularly) and the oil barons can manipulate their output, control the messaging and change these people’s votes (especially in an election year).
Dumping some of our strategic reserves when prices get too high is a strategy that counters this machination.
And if the world supply is in a high producing state, dumping some of these reserves can sink prices low enough we can refill those reserves for cheaper than we initially bought the reserves that we dumped.
Republicans then get on the horn and claim this is risky, helps nobody but democrat politics, etc, etc. They’re not wrong, but the entire thing is political brinkmanship, so… who cares? 😄
You’re referring to Trump or Biden? It’s unclear.
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Trump outsmarts no one. He bullies and bluffs because thats all his handlers know to do. Biden has a slightly less confrontational crew on his ship
I think there’s a valid argument to be made that the cheeto did “outsmart” the gop, for certain values of smart. He tapped into the country’s desire for overt racism under a strongman fascist figure in a way no one else was recognizing in 2016, and as a result he made every single GOPer bend the knee to him, even his most vocal critics.
Sure, that could only happen to a party with no policy and zero principles, but he did it. He became the chief pile of shit on his throne overlooking his subjects made of watery diarrhea.
He didn’t outsmart the GOP, he just appealed to the primary voter more. Lots of celebrity status and strongman type talk. After that GOP does what it does best, fall in line lest the Dems win.
“I did that” sticker people in shambles
Don’t forget about the recent pricing collusion reporting.
The higher prices were the result of collusion with OPEC by American oil producers.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if those decals were intentionally created by conservative groups in the know.
We should resurrect those…to trigger all the magasnowflakes.
I saw one of those on a pump after prices went down (as they tend to do), and actually did lol. One of the redhatters had not gotten to it yet. I suspect at least a few of them realized the irony.
Republicans are outraged at anything Biden does. This isn’t new.
Yeah it started back in 2008 with Obama winning. GOP does nothing but oppose anything “libs” do.
Oh, it’s way older than Obama. Republicans hated Clinton and Carter.
They really, really, really lost it over Clinton for sure, because he had a wife that actually had ideas, and, even…spoke about those ideas. In public. They were horrified about this.
It’s been happening since Newt Gingrich. He created the playbook
exactly! He is the sonofabitch that started the whole “it’s 100% my way or go fuck yourself” politics…
They can’t come up with anything helpful for people. They just take anything a democrat does and do the opposite. It’s insane.
Democrats - Lets make peoples lives better: Republikkklowns - WHAAAAAAAT!!! WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS!!!
Man, I remember when the “Tea Party” (what became the Freedom Caucus, then MAGA) was laughed out of the room by the vast majority of people, and Sarah Palin, who, it is rumored, can still see Russia from her house in Alaska, was not idolized but ridiculed to the point where movies like “Iron Sky” spoofed her with clueless villain characters. Good times.
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It’s like when they refused to pass their own immigration bill because they’d rather campaign on the issue than fix the problem.
The same reason Republicans voted against their own immigration bill: Trump told them not to because he doesn’t want to give that win to Biden. No wins for Biden, especially in an election year. Republicans continue holding us hostage so they can to put their fuhr back in office.
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“Bah– god! Here’s Biden with a steel chair!”
Remember when they did climb and republicans stuck little “I did that” stickers on the pumps?
Should be taxing the shit out of it anyway to snap the US from it’s petrol addiction.
Is there even a hair of validity to the argument that Biden’s “environmental polices” are leading to increased gasoline prices? The US is literally producing more gasoline than it uses, and oil imports are taxed federally at about 2¢.
Seems like most of the squeeze is from petro states, oil cartels, and corporations that want to price gouge.
Whether the US is a net importer or exporter of oil and gas is actually pretty irrelevant to gas prices. It’s important for other reasons, but oil is a global market regardless of where it’s produced.
It is about hating Biden.
It’s about appeasing trump
I pass a dipshits house that house many flags on it, and ha had signs in his front yard about how Biden is responsible for gas prices being so high for years now. He took the signs down. It makes me laugh.
That’s because Republicans care about the Working Class! Didn’t Red States pass Laws preventing Heat Protections and Water Breaks?
This is interesting. In my town there are stickers on the gas pumps of Joe Bidens face and they say “I did this”. So I figured it was his fault /s
