[Closed] When no one can afford petrol

ive been there since last year mate.

I thought most of us were on 'company' miles, hence free to the end user 🙂

An old hippy vegan friend told me nearly twenty five years ago that people wouldn't change their driving habits until petrol reached £10 a gallon. Its getting to nearly that now with inflation. I don't see people reducing their car usage that much.

Are you allowing for wage inflation since then?

Are you allowing for wage inflation since then?

Hippy vegans don't work so irrelevant

dont be ridiculous, we'll just replace more of the rainforest and poor peoples farmland with sugar beet for biofuel

People don't really know/care how much thier "little trips down the shops" actually cost, manufactorers MPG figures and real world MPG's are often significantly different.

rich people will still drive. Poor people will tug their forelocks deferentially as the rich folk drive past, spraying the poor folk with muddy water. Lol
Or, gangs of carjackers will roam the land, and anyone with fuel will be brutally murdered for it
Ride bicycles? Don't be so ridiculous 🙂

Mad max anyone? 😉

but, there's loads and loads and loads of oil, and it's really quite cheap.

running out? - yes, but not as fast as you may think...

petrol/diesel is expensive because of tax.

Maybe everyone will be thinner and happier for riding bicycles. And normal jeans will be waterproof.

i ve certainly and deliberately reduced my mileage. specifically the travelling to football matches.. it was costing me £80pw and i had a thought.. why travel for 2 hours watch a ball been kicked around for 90 minutes then travel another two hours and pay £80 in diesel when i could sit on the sofa and watch the game for pennies..

petrol/diesel is expensive because of tax.

This

I don't see people reducing their car usage that much.

I see a few at work who've gone down to one car. Think we'll see a rise in the number of summer cycle commuters here too. And once you've done that, plenty find that commuting in winter brings its own joys 🙂

Its coming folk - we have a choice - anticipate it and prepare or wait and react.

I think theres more people riding bikes already.

Who would learn to drive if they were 20 right now?? Insurance is what 1-2k? Fuel heading towards 1.50gbp, parking 8 quid a day in most cities. Roads are still full up though! I used to love cars, though the best I could afford was an Impreza, but other than trips into the mountains, driving is 90% a miserable experience now. The "freedom" a car brings is quickly disappearing whilst the costs get higher and higher. I;d imagine if they dropped tax, the roads would just get more congested?

How much are you guys paying per litre now?

Over here in SA the price is going up by 34c/l on wednesday. We'll be paying R10.95 per litre (approx 88p)

Its coming folk - we have a choice - anticipate it and prepare or wait and react.

How on earth will the economical miracle that's an independent Scotland cope?

isn't the [strike]fag packet[/strike] carefully costed plan to derive something like 20% of income from the black gold?

Interesting Bloomberg article on oil revenue
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/scots-independence-cost-may-exceed-oil-money-nationalists-claim.html

there's loads and loads and loads of oil

Statistically speaking, approximately forty-odd years according to [url= http://www.worldometers.info/ ]THIS[/url] site.

Bio-fuels don't help replace some of the products we create from oil, including an awful lot used in the manufacturing process of just about anything you'd care to mention...

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I had to fill up with Shell extra special Diesel or whatever it's called. £1.50 a litre. Seriously. That's a disgrace. This people is why I park my 4x4 on the yellow lines outside the school. I simply can't afford to drive further.

I am starting to think about trading down and getting shot of the "high performance" car.

Relative to many people I don't do many miles, 7-8k per annum, and only £150 per month in petrol. Petrol prices could double or more and it wouldn't really affect me, but it all seems like such a waste, and for someone as wasteful as me, that is certainly saying something about how I feel about it.

The downside, of course, is that it is not really economical to trade down, unless you take a very long term view and that is not my nature.

I can't ever imagine myself commuting by bike daily or even once a week on a regular basis. So I guess I will keep on paying whatever they decide to charge at the pumps.

The downside, of course, is that it is not really economical to trade down, unless you take a very long term view and that is not my nature.

Sounds like they've got you over a barrel.

HMMM,,, i guess we will all go back to driving one of these then... 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

SST - Member
How much are you guys paying per litre now?

Over here in SA the price is going up by 34c/l on wednesday. We'll be paying R10.95 per litre (approx 88p)

Petrol is about £1.34/litre & diesel is about £1.40/litre.....

Which is nice. 😐

Im getting diesel for about 1 euro 25 cents a litre

ahwiles - Member
but, there's loads and loads and loads of oil, and it's really quite cheap.

running out? - yes, but not as fast as you may think...

petrol/diesel is expensive because of tax.

and if it was not that expensive usage would probably be higher still. The rate of increase of use would still be at 7%. The rate of increase of use of oil only dropped from 7% after a opec price hike.
7% means in just under 10 years you have doubled you rate of consumption.

but, there's loads and loads and loads of oil, and it's really quite cheap.

running out? - yes, but not as fast as you may think...

petrol/diesel is expensive because of tax.

Obvious troll is obvious etc...

the sums are pretty straight forward and for many it will change behaviour. can't afford to live close to work in the city, but think you can afford 160 quid a month on fuel? that's 160 quid a month more you could put in to a mortgage right there. want to live in the sticks because you can? spend the money by all means, but personally i'd rather ride to work with my dog through the parks, than spend the same amount of time in a tin can wrestling with the rest of the muppets on the dual carriageway.
nice to have choice though, eh? 😀

I've just bought a car with a great big **** off petrol engine. Its ace, but its a short term thing to get it out of my system. Or as most people seem to be saying, nice car, are you having a midlife crisis. I'll be back to Diesel Skodas soon no doubt.

🙂

Driving a few miles to the shops or work hardly uses any petrol anyway so it's unlikely to make a difference to that pattern of usage.

People will still be too lazy. I think they'll ride horses instead, thus promoting a stable economy.

So, assuming someone manages to master nuclear fusion tomorrow, how long do you all think it'll take to build enough fusion plants to meet mankind's current energy demands?

Anyone?

I'm going to learn to drive, but only so insurance is cheaper when I can afford a car. Until then, bus/bike/train/care-share will be fine.

the minor detail that always seems to be overlooked, fertilizer,

You can run cars on electricity, you can heat water with the sun, but to produce the amount of crops we need, needs more inputs than can be obtained through old fashioned methods.

If we are not careful the crunch will be in food production.

"but, there's loads and loads and loads of oil, and it's really quite cheap.

running out? - yes, but not as fast as you may think...

petrol/diesel is expensive because of tax."

Obvious troll is obvious etc...

nope, i'm serious.

it's increasingly hard to get at / process, but there's chuffing loads of the stuff.

see alberta, dakota, etc.

nope, i'm serious.

see alberta, dakota, etc.

it's increasingly hard to get at / process, but there's chuffing loads of the stuff.

And what is the energy return on those resources? yes it is there but it is very expensive and environmentally very destructive to obtain. I guess it comes down to whether the natural environment matters or not?

My son is seventeen. When I was seventeen all I could think about was passing my test. (And girls). Everyone my age learned to drive and were driving within a year. Awesome! None of my sons friends are learning to drive. Not because they can't afford a car, but the insurance is so high no sane parent will pay it.

So there's a start.

Plus, I've been cycling to work pretty much every day now for two years, I'll carry on doing that, it's a big saving.

innovators have made cars that can run on compressed air for thousands of miles with NO polution, we will never see them though, oil companies buy all new technologies so we never get to see or use them and so continue to buy their ever more Expensive polutant ... Oil companies need you motorists to feeeeeed them, and feed them you will!
its your kids will suffer the most for it.

34 and still no licence, and no intention of getting one! Has always been purely a financial decision for me, don't want the cost of maintenance or petrol. Don't miss it as I've never had it.

When no one can afford petrol, maybe everyone will ride bicycles

Better start up a rickshaw courier company now 😉

its not the petrol in your car you have to worry about.
your food is made from petrol.
disregarding the petro-chemical fertilizers that are essential for food production these days, each calorie you consume requires 10 calories of oil to produce, and that is before transportation. now i know that there are a lot of calories in 1L of crude oil, but there are a lot of people and only so much oil.
food for thought

the minor detail that always seems to be overlooked, fertilizer,

More importantly, water... Many agricultural systems are currently running on big debts in terms of extraction from effectively non-renewable groundwater.

Peak phosphorus is also a biggy - we can't just 'make' P, but we can re-use food waste and biosolids much more effectively to keep it in the farming system.

The thing everyone also forgets is that fertilisers require energy to produce, lots of it. Where's that going to come from in a while?

nope, i'm serious

In that case, perhaps do a little reading about what constitutes a finite resource then?

Given its importance to our economy, oil is ludicrously cheap. It makes more sense to wean ourselves off it for non-essential things like transport, and save it for the important stuff where there is no substitute such as plastics. It's far too valuable to burn.

But I know the world doesn't work like that, so expect a nice big war in a couple of decades for what's left of it.

Fuel, expensive?!

I pay 1.70 something a litre. Well, my company does. But it is about 6 Dirham to the pound so that's about 28 pence. 😀