Source: Calculated from Federal Reserve of St. Louis (FRED) data, series APU00007471A (gasoline) and CPIAUCSL (CPI), accessed 5/15/2022
In terms of the number of dollar bills you must surrender to purchase one gallon of gasoline, sure, gas is now at an all-time high within living memory.
But, as an economist, I have to point out that a dollar isn’t a dollar any more. It used to be worth quite a bit more. And because of that, it’s just plain stupid to look at long term price trends — or all time highs — in nominal dollars.
In real — that is, inflation-adjusted — terms, the current price of gas in the U.S. is nowhere near at an all-time high. Within living memory. That honor goes to June 2008, when the price of gas in the U.S. hit $5.46 per gallon, in today’s dollars.
For those of you old enough to recall, that was the period when West Texas Crude briefly hit $150 a barrel. Which, inflation-adjusted, would be a cool $200 per barrel, in today’s dollars. (Currently, West Texas is set at just a bit over $100 per barrel).
So when people talk about this being the highest price ever for gasoline in the U.S., my sole reaction is “bullshit”. I’ve paid more than that, in real terms. Most people now driving in the U.S. have paid more than that. They just forget that period, and they don’t consider the dollar’s loss of value in the intervening decade and a half.
I guess I’m a true child of the 1970s. I started driving amid the first and second Energy Crises / Arab oil embargoes. Gasoline was rationed, and there was the real possibility that people in the U.S. Northeast were going to freeze to death due to the lack of an adequate supply of heating oil.
As a consequence, I drive gently, for best mileage. I’ve always driven the highest-MPG car I could fit into, that I could afford.
So when I see some yahoo driving an F250 as his grocery-getter, moaning about the price of gasoline, I shed no tears.
Fact is, most people will not grasp the worth of crude oil until it’s all gone, or nearly. Liquid fuels are really wonderful things to have around. It’s not smart to squander them.
But, as a country, we will routinely haul three tons of future scrap metal down the highway, just to transport our sorry selves from Point A to Point B.
And to hell with the consequences.
Except when the price of gas goes up. Then, suddenly, that’s serious.
Use this one clever trick to reduce belly fat increase MPG.
Two tricks, actually. One that’s real, one that I only wish were real.
First, arguably the biggest eye-opener for me, when my wife bought a Prius back in 2005, was the real-time fuel economy gauge. The car shows you what MPG you are getting, second-by-second.
Now, you’d think that a car with an EPA rating of 50 MPG would get 50 MPG, plus-or-minus, over the course of a drive. But that’s not even remotely true. The reality is that the MPG varies wildly from moment-to-moment, depending on what you’re doing. A hard acceleration will push the MPG into the single digits (even in a Prius). Coasting along, with the gas engine shut off, effectively generates infinite MPG.
The upshot is that the EPA rating of 50 MPG is the weighted average of all those different situations. And it’s only the average. Only when you are cruising at a steady speed on flat highway will you actually get 50 MPG. Other times, you’re getting some MPG that’s not just different, but vastly different.
Back when the U.S. Congress still cared about gas mileage, there was a movement to mandate instantaneous MPG readouts on all new cars. The reasoning — backed by plenty of research — was that if people could see that their driving style frequently drove their MPGs into the low-single-digit range, they’d change their behavior and improve their overall gas mileage.
Needless to say, the manufacturers of large, gas-guzzling vehicles — at that time, more-or-less the American automotive industry — fought against that. If you make your profits on 3-ton SUVs that get 12 MPG, the last thing you want is for the owners to see just how rapidly those suck down gas during hard acceleration.
Today, some cars do have instantaneous MPG readouts on the dash. But by and large, it’s not those big gas-guzzlers. And by and larger, unlike the Prius, where the instantaneous MPG was front-and-center, those tend to look like an afterthought.
That said, in the modern era, with OBD-II (On-board diagnostics II) ports standard on all cars, it’s a snap to add an instantaneous fuel economy readout to any car. Cheapest one I could find that is set up to do that runs about $80. I used to use a ScanGauge in my non-Prius vehicle, which in addition to showing fuel economy will (e.g.) read and reset engine codes and such, for about $160. And I”d bet that some of the cheaper bluetooth-enabled OBD readers — that work with your phone — will do that as well.
What I’m getting at here is that the best thing you can do about high gasoline prices is to use less. Drive less, sure. But drive to get better MPG as well. And as a learning tool for that, nothing beats an instant-reading fuel economy gauge. These days, those are straight-up plug-and-play with any modern car.
Separately, there’s one more thing I’d do to bring down U.S. gasoline consumption. This one is completely imaginary. But I’d bet it would be hugely effective.
Here’s something I’ve learned from using firewood to heat my home. Unless you physically lift and carry your fuel, you have no clue about the tons and tons of fuel you are consuming to (e.g.) heat your home. Or run your car.
If every able-bodied person had to fill their gas tank by hand — by lifting up a container and pouring in the gas — I bet that much of the U.S. demand for huge vehicles would disappear promptly. Because, with gas pumps and such, the average American driver has no clue about the sheer weight of fuel that they consume every year. And if you had to move all that weight, even a little ways, you’d think a lot harder about how much you need to drive, and how much vehicle you really need.
Take, say, a top-of-the-line 2018 GMC Yukon, big engine, 4WD. That gets 16 MPG overall, per fueleconomy.gov The average U.S. driver drives about 14,000 miles a year (widely cited from the US Federal Highway Administration). A gallon of gas weighs about 6.3 pounds (cite).
Put those numbers in a spreadsheet, and you’ll estimate that the typical Yukon driver pumps 2.8 tons of gasoline into the tank, every year. With a curb weight of 5,965 pounds or just under 3 tons, (cite), in round numbers, a typical GMC Yukon consumes its own weight in gasoline every year. Year after year.
And if you had to lift the weight of that vehicle, one piece at a time, week after week, over the course of a year, I expect you’d get pretty tired of it. To the point where you might consider something a bit more efficient. Even if you had no problem with the expense of buying and running a Yukon.
For sure, by the end of heating season each year, I am right sick of firewood. And that’s a good thing, because it reminds me of the absolutely ridiculous quantities of fuel required to keep a typical suburban house heated. And makes me just that much more aggressive about insulation, drafts, thermostat settings, and the like.
But the fact is, as Americans, we never have to lift a finger to get that fuel delivered. (Or, at least, we never have to lift anything heavier than the nozzle of a gas pump).
And so, as with the instantaneous MPG of your vehicle, it’s your birthright as an American to be absolutely ignorant about the enormous quantities of fuel you consume.
Until the price goes up. Then everybody seems surprised, and starts pointing fingers.
Having now seen several fuel price spikes in my lifetime, I no longer find the predictable responses to be even remotely amusing. And I think that if we actually saw the amount of fuel being burned on a flow basis, and if each of us had to tote our own fuel around — even a little bit — we’d be a lot more careful about how we use it.
