What happens when gasoline exceeds $7 a gallon here in the USA?

Question

Will there be any U.S.-based auto manufacturers left after that? How to you think American's will cope?

Answer 1

Poor people will kill and eat you.

Answer 2

riots in the streets secret service guards for every congress man/woman,anarchy will will be the rule of the day

Answer 3

It wont be long before the US looks like China.  Vespa sales will SOAR!

Answer 4

The bottom line is that life goes on.  No matter how much the gas costs.

We need to get serious about praying for our politicians and the companies who provide energy so that they will do the right thing.

I Cr 13;8a

Answer 5

There will be massive unemployment world wide.

The world will go into a complete depression.

The bottom will fall out of the energy market.

The next world war will follow ending with an exchange of nuclear warheads.

End of story.

If gas hits 7.00 a gallon, there will be a lot of people who can not afford to go to work. There also will not be the expendable income to buy things from China. Also it will no longer economical to bring food into the US from Argentina (and many more places). When the US stops buying, those employed in sweat shops world wide will have not place to sent the goods they make. With no demand for the massive amounts of fuel for transportation, and a decline in demand for electric power for manufacturing, the oil prices will plummet. The amount of money lost by those invested in the energy market will force expansionary idealism to the forefront. When a country is invaded, that has a nuclear arsenal, it will use it to conserve energy. This will result in retaliation by the "victims" allies.

In short all of a h**l of mans own making will be unleashed.

Answer 6

I don't see commuter cost as that big of an issue. Assuming you get 25 miles a gallon (some people get more, others get less), and you drive 12,000 miles a year, that means gas represents a $3360 cost.

The real issue is that everything else is manufactured using petroleum. Even "clean energy" technologies usually use a lot of plastic (a petroleum product) and are energy-intensive to construct.

Ethanol is no solution, because after you take into account fertilizer and oil used to run the machinery that produces the fuel, you have a net energy loss. Were it not for subsidies, no one would produce ethanol.

It's hard to know whether there will be a way of coping though. Environmental apocalyptic books like "The Long Emergency" predict doom and gloom, but assume that no mitigating technologies will emerge. It seems hard to imagine a technology that would let us live without oil now, but it would be hard to imagine a Playstation 3 twenty years ago.

No one really knows. My only prediction is this: because of a combination of gas prices and changing consumer tastes, large tracts of single-family homes on the outskirts of big cities are going away. Sprawl is just stupid whether you have high oil prices or unlimited free energy.

Answer 7

That's not as far away as you might think.

I believe it will have to peak at

$10 a gallon before the government

even attempts to do anything.

I remember when Carter

changed the speed limits to 55 mph

on the highways, that was such a joke.

We'll do what we always have in the past,

moan and groan and nothing will change.

We'll learn to adjust, just like before.

Remember when we thought

$1.00 for a gallon of gas was highway robbery,

that wasn't that many years back.

I'm hoping the government will go

back to Commodities, I don't mind

standing in line for some free groceries,

that is probably what it is going to take to

get us through this new wave of high fuel prices.

My parents survived the Great Depression,

I'm sure we'll survive this one as well!

Answer 8

More motorcycles and some with sidecars.

Answer 9

*Puts on his engineering hat*

Alternative fuels are a stopgap solution, but not a longterm one. Clearly, turning crops into fuel is not a sound practice when one considers the global demand for food.

In my opinion, the only viable option for the future are battery-electric, or diesel-battery-electric cars. Considering cost effectiveness per mile driven, nothing else comes close. Charging up a battery driven car costs a handful of dollars, compared to an easy $150 for filling up at $7 per gallon.

The technology for making electric cars

To say that Ford and General Motors are "US-based" isn't exactly true. While most of their major facilities and administration centers are in North America, they have operations all over the world. Honda and Toyota have a significant manufacturing presence in the US. Most of the cars they sell in America are, in fact, assembled in America, though they ship many of their parts globally, (as do Ford and GM.)

The problem with "domestic" car companies as I see it, is twofold.

1) Over the last half century they've allowed their advertising budget to balloon, while strangling their R&D budget. I won't argue that advertising can show a direct return in your company's profits, but it's no substitute for investing in the future. Its like the old sports proverb: offense wins games, defense wins championships. This is also true of the Japanese companies, but over the past 25 years, their development efforts have seriously overshadowed that of US companies, and I think they are reaping the rewards of that today.

2) Car companies have colluded with the petroleum industry almost from the start. What this means is that what they've really been selling isn't cars, it's gasoline engines.

(Gotta go now, will wriet more later.....)

Answer 10

When gas goes to $7 a gallon, I won't be the only one taking my bike to work.

There still will be plenty of fat, lazy slobs complaining about bicycles on the road. But now there will be more cyclists telling them to get bent.

Answer 11

I'm thinking about digging a hole to the Earth's core to use its heat energy as fuel.

Answer 12

It won't affect personal or public transportation nearly as much as it will affect the cost of living for just about everything else.

At $3.50 a gallon, filling a 20 gallon tank costs $70. At $4.00 a gallon, it will cost $80, a difference of $10. Not that important for individuals, but absolutely critical for shipping and trucking companies when you consider the VOLUME of gasoline that they use every day to transport goods.

Think about it; how much of all the goods and services you buy rely on a commodity that spends ANY time on a truck?

That's what I thought: EVERYTHING. And because the USA never invested in a decent system of railway transportation (combined with the fact that the area is so large), shipping costs will be substantially more than at $3.50 a gallon, and the expenses will be passed on to the consumer for businesses to make a profit.

That doesn't even take into account the fuel and energy needed to grow and harvest agriculture and feed livestock. Food will cost more because it will be more expensive to produce, and it will impact you more at the grocery aisle than at the pump.

Answer 13

If gas really did get that high I would seriously consider:

1) A highway capable scooter and use car only for weekends and rainy days

2) Getting a new job MUCH closer to home, if that's possible. Past attempts have failed because I don't have a bachelors degree.

Answer 14

Calls for speculation. There is not a soul out there who can answer this question properly.

So once gas goes through the roof you will no longer drive?

When I started driving, gas was $.85 a gallon. When it hit $1.50 I swore I would never buy gas if it hit $3.00. Well, now I drive a Saturn instead of my V8 Lifted Truck

Answer 15

I don't know that there's much we can do about it. We've tried to cut down on our driving, but you can only cut out just so much!

Answer 16

People might "get it" that it is a good idea to time their speed to get through green lights by coasting two blocks to a red light.

Until then, it will keep advancing. It will be cool when the right lane is reserved for bicycles on non-highways. And cooler still when you see recumbent, windscreened bicycles everyday. The right lane will be the fast lane at 4:30-6pm!

Answer 17

I'm waiting for the day that cars can run on human's gas.  I tell you what, all we'd need to do is buy some dollar burritos and our car would run for a month.

If gasoline exceeds $7 a gallon, I'm buying a Vespa.

Answer 18

At $7/gallon, alternative fuels will definitely take the spot light.

US based auto manufacturers have already been switching their cars to handle E85.

But I believe they'll adapt as necessary to which ever fuel type is being burned.

Answer 19

I'll see you on public transit!

Answer 20

Well,all the bicycle shops would probably do well,i know it's getting to where you put $20 in your tank and it goes just under 1/2 a tank when you had a 1/4 tank before you put the $20 in it,at $7 or over goodness it really wouldn't move the gauge,but the car manufactures would suffer, GM, Ford,Chrysler,and so on,but the people that have alot of money (well to do) they wouldn't care.

Answer 21

a president would come up and tell you dig a hole in your living room to get oil.

Answer 22

"We're going to ask the Saudis to increase their oil production and flood the market with additional supply, to try to get a handle on some of the prices. Yet we won't do it ourselves here in America."

Answer 23

I'll say my morning commute will be much easier.

no more traffic jams

Answer 24

well, with desiel allready over 4.50 here the shipping has been cut. And "Without Trucks America Stops"  

The cost of everything goes up.

Once fuel hits $5 three trucking compaining I work with are shuting their doors. Which means I may end up without a job.

I work with the shippers close. When the cost of fuel goes up  ONE CENT it costs the BNSF Railrod $100,000. And they are number 2 for railroad shippers.  

Buying a gallon of milk with go up. Everything will cost much more. And driving to get that paycheck will cost more. Buying food will cost more.

I allready drive a scooter which gets 85mpg and I spend too  much too fill that up.

Answer 25

I wouldn't mind doing as Holland does and using a bike as a main means of transportation, but most people here are too fat and lazy to do that. We've become too dependent on using no effort to travel.

On a serious note concerning everyone else, we'll probably end up using electricity or hydrogen as fuel. Using ethanol will cause food prices to go up and will would have to be used conservatively. If everyone drove vehicles that get poor gas mileage on ethanol, we'd run short on fuel fairly quickly. You can only get so much ethanol from corn each year.

Answer 26

What happens.....

Loaf of Bread $10

Quart of Milk   $10

Toilet Paper   $5.00 per roll

Get the picture?

It is possible to that everyone will come out i=unscathed but what it just may well do is widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Middle class will be gone.

Middle class is close to 75% (around) of the population.

When staple items such as food increases, then there will be nothing left over for disposable income and prices will rise further because it costs more to make fewer parts than more.

The rich will keep bringing it in while the middle class will slip into the lower income popuation.

Scary scenario.