Seems pretty obvious that the price you’re paying at the pump will be correlated to what the refiners paid for the crude days or weeks ago. Of course, the rises always seem to be a little tighter than the drops.
This would be a valid argument if the price of gas didn’t go up in rigid lockstep with the price of oil. If gas prices were directly linked to the price of oil, it would take a few weeks before the prices at the pumps followed price increases for refinery feedstock.
It’s the sudden separation at the end of the graph that’s damning.
The separation you’re complaining about is less than a week. Helpful context would be, I don’t know, a chart showing more than six weeks of price comparisons. Maybe take a look at Hudson’s posts and you’ll see much greater lags/gaps both directions in the past five years.
The current trend is what’s relevant here. The price of oil rose and everyone lost their shit as the prices at the pumps went up. Now the price has started coming down, gas prices have barely moved. That’s the whole point.
A few days, or even a week is simply not enough time to evaluate such a spike. When the changes are gradual, it appears to be “in lock step”, but more pronounced spikes are not. Look at long-term data. If oil goes back to $70 for six months, and gas is still at $4/gallong, then that will be damning…of gasoline station owners.
Interesting test. Teslas backing up their range/efficiency claims. Efficiency is they key, because the more miles per kW you get, the less you’ll be charging so the less time you’ll spend charging.
Cheapest gas I saw on my commute home from LAX last night was $5.89/gal at a station on Pacific Coast Highway of all places. My usual double secret probation station near LAX was actually over $6/gal. Ouch.
Sadly, my R1S is now being forecast to be ready by…2024. Thankfully, they’re honoring my original price for the configuration I chose in Nov. '21, but now are only offering a 7 seat configuration, which a bachelor like myself who has only a Golden Retriever to cart around, has no use for.
On second thought, maybe I can utilize that 7 seat configuration by packing some hated dojers fans in the Rivian, driving them off to the middle of the Mojave Desert and leaving them to rot…
The F-150 Lightning base $40,000 model will have 230 miles of range. Not bad for what it is, but it’s going to spend a lot of time charging. The extended range model that gets 300 miles (Rivian range) starts at $75,000.
Ford has 200,000 pre-orders, but is going to make only 1,000 base models, focusing its efforts on making the more expensive models.
Basically, when it comes to EVs, if you’re not in the luxury/import car market already, you’re priced out. That will change once China and India start selling their econo-EVs for the same price as a base Corolla.
The Electric Viking has a touchless orgasm over new batteries. It’s pretty exciting news, though, tbf.
Bottom line: higher energy density means longer range from the same battery size or the same range from a smaller pack which means weight and cost savings.
Reducing the battery pack size is an exponential thing. The less weight you have the less power you need to move it so the smaller battery pack you can have which reduces the weight further so you need even less power and so on ad infinitum. Smaller battery packs also means shorter charging times and much reduced cost.
They say it’s for aerodynamics, but I’d love to see the actual data on that. I suspect there’s still a fetish among EV designers to make EVs unnecessarily futuristic.