Per the New York Times, here follows a list of cars that cost $100 to fill up, as of July 2008:
And those are just the ones the Times knows about. There must be others. Can we get some more listed in the comments please?
Earlier this year, I wrote about how US consumers are responding to high gas prices by moving away from light trucks & SUVs towards smaller cars. The trend continued in April:
Of equal concern to automakers, buyers defected from high-margin trucks and SUVs to cheaper and more fuel-efficient cars more rapidly than expected due to high gasoline prices.Cars accounted for 53 percent of sales in April with light trucks near 47 percent, a nearly complete reversal of the share of the categories a year earlier, according to Autodata.
The market shift toward cars has favored Japanese automakers with more established small car offerings.
By contrast, the trend has pummeled the truck-heavy lineups of Detroit-based automakers with the average price of regular unleaded gasoline punching above $3.62 per gallon on Thursday, a record high, according to AAA.
The three Detroit-based automakers had just a 48 percent share of the world's largest vehicle market in April, down 5 percentage points from a year earlier.
Let's hear it for the oft-maligned US consumer. Common sense decisions are a possibility in this country, if given the right incentives.
These news reports make it clear to me that the problem in this country is not with the end user. The problem is with the program. Americans would eat alternative energy up if given the (sensible) opportunity. This was covered in detail in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car?, which is a stunning documentary about how environmentally-conscious Californians wanted to buy electric cars, but weren't able to do so because of corporate interests & weak government.
How do we fix or change the program is the question. I'm not really sure how that gets done sans crisis or some major problem or negative event. The corporate interests control the government & they have zero incentive to cede control. Control will have to be taken ... which implies organization & inspiration.
As this political season is showing, the people are nowhere near as empowered as they need to be to make change happen. People just don't care enough to get involved at the level required to make real changes happen.
There's a glimmer of hope out there in some of these news stories ... but the light is very faint. I still hold that it will take pain, crisis, bad shit to get people moving in the right direction.
Impressed by record high gasoline prices & a bleak economic picture, US consumers have responded by 1) reducing spending on automobiles & 2) allocating the money to more fuel-efficient models. In other words, the free market is at work. We are finally seeing what it takes to get people to change ... & it takes pain.
The auto makers are now recognizing the "seismic shift in consumer preferences" & unfortunately for them, they are not prepared to respond to updated demand. For the most part (& especially for the US automakers), car makers apparently didn't see this coming. Ford & GM are paying dearly for the lack of foresight ... they just don't have anything to sell the newly conservation-minded customer who is looking for the quick fix weight loss program after years of hogging out at the gas pump.
It's good to know that, although late to the party, the consumers are still - on average - rational thinkers who will change when things get tight. The SUV is now DOA. They were fun while they lasted, but not so fun now in a world of $60 fill-ups. Good riddance ...
I have long been aware of the Federal tax credit available to purchasers of hybrid vehicles ... but I didn't realize that the IRS has a plan for the phase-out of those credits. Apparently, after an auto maker sells 60,000 units of any hybrid model that qualifies for the tax break, the credits begin to evaporate for future buyers.
Honda Motor Company has sold more than 60,000 hybrid vehicles that qualify for the federal tax credit, so the tax credits for the automaker's hybrid vehicles will be cut in half as of January 1st, 2008.
Toyota - due to success with the Prius - is even further down the road to zero federal tax relief. Tax credits on Toyota hybrids end on October 1st.
While this policy will surely help other manufacturers catch up to Toyota and Honda, it seems less helpful to us consumers. Shouldn't we get the tax break and the model we want? Or am I being unrealistic here?
Either way, for prospective hybrid buyers, you should be aware of the federal policy with respect to tax credits, so visit the IRS website or do some more digging before you hit the dealerships.
You're concerned about the environment and about the amount of energy you personally consume. You are thinking about reducing your carbon footprint. You are serious about changing something about your behavior, and you want to do something bigger than running down to Home Depot to grab some compact flourescent light bulbs for the house. But you aren't sure what you should do ... and you need some guidance.
Here's the simple solution: sell your car and replace it with a car that gets better fuel mileage.
I did it almost exactly one year ago, and it has been a great decision. I now go around telling everyone to do the same thing, so I might as well tell you about it too.
In my case, I swapped my Nissan Pathfinder SE for a used Honda Accord. Just like that I went from driving a vehicle that averages 15mpg (city + highway combined) to one that averages 24mpg. If I drive the Honda 13k miles this year, I'll be saving 325 gallons of gas. At $3.00/gallon (NY has a pretty steep gas tax), that's $975 dollars in my pocket. That's a pretty significant chunk of change.
I also obviously reduced the amount of harmful emissions I was producing by driving my car. FuelEconomy.gov tells me I am expelling about 4.5 fewer tons per year by making the switch from SUV to sedan. That feels good.
I loved the Pathfinder, but I could no longer overlook the fact that it was a total gas hog. Long drives from Albany, NY to family in Boston, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut and to vacations in Montreal, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine were becoming more and more expensive as gas prices hit $3.00/gallon territory.
Sure, I miss being perched higher up on the road and I miss the security that comes from shift on the fly 4 wheel drive during winter snowstorms. But let's face it - those are luxuries I can manage without. I hear a lot of people say they drive a big SUV because they need the space. I think that's BS. The Honda packs very well and has bigger trunk room than would appear. Other than moving furniture, the Honda meets my space needs really well.
So, if you want to reduce your energy use, save a substantial amount of money and do the right thing for the environment, replace your car. Very simple. If you're already in a small, fuel efficient car, kudos for choosing wisely and responsibly!
Sales of hybrid automobiles in the US are projected to have grown 35% in 2006 (compared to 2005). At the same time, recent articles like this one claim that consumer interest in hybrids is on the decline. As long as sales are growing 35% year over year, I don't really care if fewer people are considering buying a hybrid. Why look at it from that angle?
Anyway, in addition to very healthy sales growth, the US Dept of Energy is reporting that the leader in hybrid sales - Toyota - is planning to slash prices on 2008 hybrids like the Camry and the Prius. Me thinks that hybrid sales will continue to gain year over year with news like this. And me thinks this is good news as we try to increase the average fuel efficiency of our auto fleet.
Saving money is like so 1982. Why save when I still have over $1000 available credit on all of my cards? It doesn't like make sense to not buy stuff or travel to like see friends just for trying to save some spare money. I just transfer my balances around to whoever offers the lowest rate. It's all good ...
- In 2006, the [credit card] industry mailed out nearly 8 billion credit card offers, up from 3.5 billion in 2000.
- Credit card debt, less than $8 billion in 1968 (in current dollars), now exceeds $880 billion, more than tripling since 1988, adjusting for inflation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank.
- Penalty fees alone cost consumers $17.1 billion in 2006 — up from $12.8 billion in 2003, adjusted for inflation, according to R. K. Hammer, a bank card advisory firm.
- At the same time, as banks have moved from fixed interest rates to variable rates, the ability of borrowers like the Moellerings to move balances from one card to another, or from credit cards to lower-interest home equity loans, can have as much impact on their finances as whether they get a raise or trim household expenses, said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.
- But the array of loans has become so complicated that many consumers fail to understand the different interest rates, financing charges and penalties they now face, Ms. Perry said.
Bankrate.com has released the results of a survey of current American homeowners on the topic of mortgages.
The stunning news: over one third of the homeowners surveyed have no idea what kind of mortgage they have.
Surely the mortgage market has become much more complex in the past five years, but can anyone honestly blame the mortgage vultures companies for the coming lending bloodbath? Please. This survey is a super-sad read. Confidence in my fellow Americans continues to scrape along the bottom of the barrel.
Sure, there is a sucker born every day ... but purchasing a house is considered one of the most important financial decisions of your life. To fully understand the details and implications of conducting this transaction would seem to be a prerequisite to signing on the dotted line. The fact that so many people have no idea what type of mortgage they have - let alone what it means to have that type of mortgage - says it all.
The no clue, no responsibility binge is ending. Let's hope the politicians don't make us all pay for the actions perpetrated by these idiots.
As a saver and conserver, I've always been on top of my check book. I'm not one of those people who have only a vague idea about how much money they have left in their account. I've never overdrawn any of my accounts. One might say I'm very anal about keeping track of the bottom line. And one would be right.
However, being anal about your bank account balance doesn't equate with saving money. In order to start to reduce the amount of money you spend, you first need to know where you spend your money.
At the beginning of 2007 my fiancee and I decided to start keeping track of our spending by creating a budget. We somehow stumbled upon PeachBudget, and it's turned out to be an easy-to-use, valuable tool that tells us where we're spending our money.
PeachBudget is a simple Microsoft Excel file with multiple, linked worksheets. You create spend categories like: rent, transportation, groceries, etc. and allocate a monthly spending target to each category. Then, as the month progresses, you simply enter in your individual costs. At the end of the month, PeachBudget tells you how much you spent in each category and whether or not you exceeded your budget amount.
As I said, in order to start saving money, you first need to know where you spend money today so you can stop bleeding cash. So, the first few months of using PeachBudget is really more about diagnosing the problem (identifying over-spending). After the diagnosis is made, you can switch to action mode and start to tighten the purse strings where necessary.
PeachBudget: a free tool you can use to profile your spending ways.
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