Enginer kit question

There is Europe's Energy Portal » Natural Gas Prices, Electricity Rates, Diesel & Unleaded Fuel Costs (I posted this in another thread) and http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.xls.

 

I made a PHEV recuperation calculator here http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-p...icle-recuperation-calculator.html#post1291687

 

Correct. In rural locations i have seen it as high as 139.9p a litre in recent weeks.

 

In Netherlands where I live today's price is € 1.74 per liter for regular (premium is more expensive of course) so that is € 6.51 per US gallon. That is US$ 9.22 per gallon.

In my case the Enginer kit will pay back for itself in a little under 4 years. After that it's all profit.
I guess the situation in the UK is about the same as mainland Europe.

Addendum: actually in the UK seems a bit cheaper as it turns out but not much difference. Are rural areas more expensive Flan? Over here in the big cities is always more expensive that rural areas, because they know you have no place else to go. I live in a small village up north and we have the lowest prices in the country and a lot of competing brands.

 

Stations on the motorways, or in small towns, are more expensive (about 5p a litre more) but the best deals are usually the supermarkets. the car snobs will tell you that supermarket fuel is no good, but i've used it for years with no problem.

 

I'm only using branded gasoline such as Shell or Chevron on my Prius. 15 out of 16 fill ups so far are Shell and 1 Chevron because I couldn't find a Shell station. BP is considered cheap gas in the US and it's sold at AM/PM convenient store. It's 10-15 cents/gal cheaper than branded gasoline. It's funny that we have an oil field in our (the city's) backyard and the gas here are still expensive. Every where I go, there's a pumpjack. My dad calls them grass hoppers. There's are several oil refinery near the city. The closest one is 3 miles from my house.

 

Your petrol is not expensive, it is cheap.

 

Wish we had expensive fuel like that here, we are paying over $8 a gallon, it does bring down the payback time to somewhere achievable though

 

Our gasoline is expensive. Your gasoline pricing is a result of a completely out of control state that places the most regressive and outrageously high taxation possible on its subjects and as a result is outrageous.

How much can you buy a gallon of industrial grade methanol or any other refined hydrocarbon for in the UK? We can get 55 gallon drums for about $3/gallon. That's what the price for a low consumption industrial grade hydrocarbon should be. Now, for a mega produced, high volume product with intense competition for refining and distribution such as gasoline, it should be less than $3.

I certainly remember not too long ago the wholesale price per gallon around $0.50/gallon in Califoria and the price of gas just tipped at the $1/gallon mark. This might have been 10 years ago at worst. It's now 4x that.

Gasoline is a necessary commodity, not a social engineering tool for control freaks.

 

CPRO, BP isn't "branded" gasoline? It's not like it's Rotton Robbie, Amerika or some other mongrel brand. Why, even their hi test still bears the AMOCO name! In any event, check out a refinery terminal such as Tosco in Martinez, CA, every label tanker pulls in, fills up and moves out.

 

The US has never seen gas prices over $5.50 The last time was summer of 08 before the presidential election. People were crying about gas prices then. This time the gas prices has climbed to just over $4 here. The national average is about $3.62. California pays the nation's highest gas prices. I'm bitching because we have essentially a freaking Iraq in our backyard and the they're pricing the gas as if we're shipping them from Saudi Arabia. I know the gasoline from the local refinery is sold locally because a friend that works for one of those refinery told me.

 

Our gas in the US is expensive. We pay for it in our taxes and the lives of our young citizens, instead of at the pump.

However, the calculation for 'worth it' should not be made on current prices, but rather on predicted inflation. Most people are pretty bad at figuring exponential functions (especially when they do it in their heads). The figure I use (everyone should find one that they agree with) comes from the DOE and is 6.81% inflation per year. Which amounts to basically doubling the cost every ten years.

It should be noted that this figure came out early this past summer, and we are already into what it predicts for 2012.

 

I thought that European countries such as the UK and Germany have been part of so-called coalition forces; thus, the same can be said for them. Ooops, they are "paying for it at the pump" AND paying for it out of their general budget.

The claim that we are shifting payment from the pump to general taxes is as bogus as claiming that we aren't paying for protecting our houses from foreign attack "at the property appraiser's office."

And, the only reason we have middle eastern military interventions over oil is because the leftists in this country actively and aggressively try to stop drilling, aggressively and actively try to stop nuclear, or any reasonable ability to become energy self sufficient AND have the standard of living nearly everybody on the planet desires.

 

So are we.
Unless you are going to bring actual numbers into the argument, in which case...
Germany Military Budget: $46,859,000,000 0.9% of GDP
Great Britian Military Budget: $69,271,000,000 2.5% of GDP
United States Military Budget: $663,255,000,000 4.3% of GDP.

 

Can we remove a few off topic posts and please get back on topic which is:
Based on FirstFlight's criteria "Would it be worth it to get an Enginer kit?"

 

I thought you said actual numbers? What about $ per adult in each country. We were talking about whether an INDIVIDUAL pays for it at the pump or through their taxes. GDP has nothing to do with anything.

 

That's qualified by the word "would." If the Enginer system worked consistently, then there are real world commuting profiles in the US which justify buying the system. The problem is that most of us cannot get through a full tank of gas (granted, some tanks are 700 + miles, so a lot of problems can occur during that time) without something breaking and requiring another couple of weeks downtime.

 

No PHEV kit is worth it if solely based on recuperating the cost of the kit, not even the cheap Enginer kit. There's only 1 good reason for getting a plugin kit, to be-able to shift energy usage more domestically. If you think you can recuperate the cost the kit, you're sadly mistaken. It will take over 100,000 miles to recupe an Enginer kit base on current U.S. gas prices and at 100mpg. Based on your 66 mile round trip, do you think it's worth $3,500 to get 70 round trip mpg as appose to 55mpg? Do you think it's worth $13,000 to get 175 round trip mpg as appose to 55mpg? Does a 2011 Prius II worth extra $6,500 to get 17 extra combined MPG compared to the 2011 Elantra? It would take a 2011 Prius II about 150,000 miles to save that $6,500 in fuel compared to 2011 Elantra's combined 33mpg at $4/gal.
To me, adding a PHEV kit to a hybrid is like adding a turbo or a supercharger to an already a fast vehicle. There's no monetary payback but the thrill of fast acceleration is where the money goes. In the PHEV kit, the money went to being able to achieve 100+mpg.