Elon Musk: "Gasoline should probably be $10 a gallon"

Sounds like he doesn't understand what a hybrid is.

 

Even less abstract is the fact that the price of gas doesn't include a tax that covers the cost of our military presence in the Middle East. Call me an old fashioned fiscal conservative, but it seems to me that if a sustained military operation is required to safeguard your supply of oil, then the cost of everything that uses oil should go up in order to cover that cost. As it is, we have cheap gas and pay for our wars in the sandbox with deficit spending. I'm sure our children will appreciate that as the political, economic and environmental cost of our lifestyle falls squarely on their shoulders.

I'm all in favor of $10.00 per gallon gas. That's closer to what it's actually worth. And yes, it will hurt. Good. It needs to hurt.

EDIT: I should mention that gas where I'm stationed has been as high as $7.50 per gallon, after the conversion from euro/liter to dollars/gallon was made. And yes, it sucked. But we drove a little less, found ways to carpool and in general compensated for it.

 

Firstly, I love the Prius. I believe it is the best consumer hybrid on the market. However, I agree with the 2nd comment... sorta. Actually it's 0% electric currently. It has a hybrid drivetrain where all the electricity generated is in one way or another derived from fossil fuels. (For now.) It isn't a hybrid-source vehicle at all. It is simply making the maximum economically feasible efficient use of the fossil fuel powering the car.

That being said, it's also just a nice car! I would love to have a Tesla and get some solar panels, but I simply cannot afford that. We will have to wait for technologies to get cheaper and companies to get their crap together. I still can't get over GM selling the NiMH patent to big oil, and then having to make a lithium battery because the oil companies won't sell them the right to use enough KW to do what they need to do. (Propel the vehicle 100-150mi like the EV-1) In fact, I wonder how the gen3 Prius got it's larger capacity battery. I know on the gen2 they had to pay, and only got the right to 1.3kwh (I could be slightly off here, but the point remains.) So, basically our Prius has even been held back by big oil.

 

While it would be nice to see more hybrids being purchased now, we will see it in the future. It should not be done through forcing people by raising fuel prices, that will cripple the country and further damage the economy because all the trucking companies and independent drivers can not afford $10 a gallon fuel. The price of everything will go through the roof and no one will be able to afford a hybrid because they will be paying $15 for a loaf of bread. A lot of businesses will go under. Who will be able to afford a $15 cup of Starbucks.

The way to encourage people to switch to hybrid technology is to give tax incentives, rebates, gas guzzler turn in programs. With good incentives that help, not hurt, people will want to go green. Everyone will need a new car eventually, if the incentives are there to help make the Hybrid as affordable as other cars, people will switch. Not having to put 20-30 gallons into my car each week at $3/gallon was incentive. I didn't spend over $25,000 for my 2010 Prius to have the my fuel cost go back to $90 a week because the oil companies are loosing revenue and they want to jack up the cost so they can still afford their $400 million retirement plans for CEO's. Sigh, this is so frustrating.

 

I can appreciate what you're saying, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that the oil is running out. Period. We either make it hurt now voluntarily or we risk the systemic collapse of our entire economy in ten or twenty years when we start scraping the bottom of the barrel and haven't put anything else in place. Gentle measures that slowly guide people in the right direction without hurting them would have been preferable, but the time for that would have been about thirty years ago. What we need now is something more like a military mobilization. Think World War Two, and how we shifted our entire society to the defeat of the Axis powers. That's kind of like how we need to get off of oil. And yes, it will suck, that is not in question. But what is also not in question is that we're running out of time, and that the consequences of inaction are not something we want to deal with, considering that easy access to fossil fuel has sustained a greater than six-fold population increase in the last two centuries alone. That equation can just as easily go the other way, only a lot faster.

For what it's worth, it needs to start sucking for CEOs as well. And the longer they bitch and moan about their corporate retreats and executive perks and eight-figure Christmas bonuses, the worse it will be when the vast majority of the population really starts feeling the pain in a way that can't be eased with financial sleight-of-hand. We've gone down that road before, and it always ends bloody. The American people can be a part of this process by turning off the T.V. and reading up on both exactly what our species is facing and the various mechanisms that citizens of a democracy can use to force the hand of those in power (there are some really great options). Fortunately, the Pentagon has been working up plans for everything from Peak Oil to dealing with climate refugees (many of them are public domain and unclassified, if you'd care to read them), but nobody in office has been moving on this because they're all too frightened of pissing off their constituency and not getting reelected. Sustained pressure from the American people is the only thing that can compel them to move.

 

I have given up on people conserving because it's the right thing to do, and I support a gasoline tax (not higher prices to the oil companies mind you). But your logic made a lot of sense to me initially, but I still come back to taxing gasoline to a) force people to conserve and b) the US has no choice but to increase tax revenues if we're ever going to stop deficit spending/debt - the stimulus package only makes it worse ultimately. We can't afford more incentives, unless we are willing to increase taxes even more somewhere else.

A gasoline tax can be brought at a controlled, predictable rate too (by varying the taxes to offset flucuations in oil prices). So people, and automakers, could see what's coming and start making buying (and manufacturing) decisions in advance. It would reduce the flucuations we've seen from the free market, like last summers extreme runup in gas prices. I've detailed this in other posts.

Your point about trucks/transportation is a good one. But maybe we need to let the cost of transporting goods increase to encourage more local goods. The idea that we're getting produce from around the world makes no sense to me, something is wrong when that is cost effective. Tough topic.

 

I think this is just a quibble over definitions. The Prius is a hybrid because its drive train combines (hybridizes) gasoline and electrical components. It is not a dual-power vehicle, since it gets all its energy from gas.

Musk seems confused by the fact that the Prius goes into pure electric mode (what sci-fi fans like to call "stealth") for very brief periods. But what he might not understand is that the battery and the electric motors are operating all the time, in conjunction with the gas engine.

It is a hybrid.

As for the price of gas, as long as the price does not reflect the true cost (environmental, military, etc.) we are dumping a tremendous burden on generations yet to come. We are, literally, stealing from our children and their children. As heavy as the burden of high gas price is to the poor, cheap gas now is a heavier burden by far on future generations.

I advocate a $15/gallon tax, on top of the cost of production, refining, distribution, and (reasonable) profit for the oil companies

 

The Gen 3 uses exactly the same battery pack as the Gen 2. The improved mileage is due to improved engine and transmission design. The Gen 3 can draw slightly more power than the Gen 2 (27kW versus 25kW if I recall correctly), which Toyota feel they are able to do through improved cooling.

It's important to remember that the electric parts of the Prius are there to facilitate the use of a more efficient engine, and to use that engine more efficiently. They are not there as an end in themselves. The more electric power you use, the worse mileage you get, in general. The battery does mean that at very low loads, the car can turn off the engine and run electric for a while, then later run the engine to recharge, which over the whole cycle is more efficient than running the engine with the throttle barely open.

I recall that there have been studies showing that there are diminishing returns for a charge-sustaining (i.e. not plug-in) hybrid, as you increase the battery size. The size we have is a reasonable compromise between capacity for hill climb assistance and the weight that the car has to carry around.

It's obviously not much use for plugging in as-is, since the car uses all the capacity that it's willing to use within about a mile. It doesn't use all the capacity of the battery, to extend the battery's life. A charge-depleting hybrid (one which doesn't actively recharge the battery to a high-level) or an EV will typically drain its battery more deeply, at the cost of reduced battery life.

 

In your first paragraph you state that the Prius gets all it's energy from gas,The prius takes energy from regenerative braking.Coasting down a hill will also produce electricity for the battery so not "all" energy comes from gas.

 

You have to burn gas to get to the top of the hill in the first place. All energy to run the car comes from burning gas, save the initial charge that Toyota applied to the HV battery.

It is a hybrid vehicle, it might not be the type of hybrid vehicle that Musk (who has his own agenda) likes, but it is a hybrid nonetheless.

 

Of course ultimately all of the car's energy comes from the fuel. Don't be confused by the fact that some of that energy can be temporarily stored in the battery, or as gravitational potential, or as kinetic energy.

$10 gas is about what is required to make Musk's cars economically attractive... I wish he'd stick to his launcher business instead. Earth needs space-based Solar power as part of its ultimate energy solution. That will be much easier with reliable lower-cost launchers; Musk is on the right track but there is much yet to be done.
http://spacex.com/

 

As far as $10 a gallon goes,I can say that when we got close to $5 here in N.Y.,one of my neighbors replaced his Hummer with a Jeep Commander and another replaced her Suburban z27 with a Toyota 4Runner.I believe their replacement vehicle selections would have been different had gas gone to $7 or $8.
I had also noticed a spike in questions from strangers about my prius during that period but the questions dropped with the price of gas lol.
Has anyone else made similar observations,it's an interesting case study.

 

I stand by my assertion. Regenerative braking merely recovers some of the kinetic energy produced from gasoline, or some of the gravitational potential energy from climbing a hill under gas power, which would otherwise be lost in friction braking, unless you want to insist on the absurd situation of a Prius dealership located on top of a mountain. But even then, the delivery truck burned fuel to get the cars there.

The only way you can add energy to a (non-plug-in) Prius is to put gasoline into the tank. My Xebra and my Porsche, by contrast, get their energy from the grid via a wall socket.

A few folks, of course, have modified their Priuses with additional batteries and the ability to charge from the grid, and it is to be hoped that Toyota will sell plug-in Priuses some time soon.

 

Ah thank you for clarifying that. All makes sense then. Same battery.

I also wanted to say that I think we do need to get off of oil quicker than we think. We need to save a huge supply of it simply for making plastics. Apparently plastic can only be recycled so many times, or at least to be used in certain ways. We really don't realize our need for oil-based plastics. I know we can compensate with corn and soy plastics, but I believe some applications require oil-based.

 

Not just plastics. A lot of pharmaceuticals are based on petroleum, not to mention fertilizer!