I bought my first hybrid car in 2006. A black Toyota Prius. Since then every car I’ve owned has been a hybrid.
The Ford Escape Hybrid is my current car. I love hybrid cars and wouldn’t drive anything else, and I don’t understand why hybrid cars never became popular.
The gas mileage is fabulous. I average about 40 miles per gallon because between 25% and 30% of the miles I drive are electric miles that use no gas at all.
They have way more power and speed than a straight gas powered vehicle. When I pull out from a red light or to pass another vehicle, I hit the accelerator and immediately zoom!
Hybrids provide both gas and electric miles but never need to be plugged in to charge. The batteries recharge as I drive. They are a much better solution to the reduction of fossil fuel usage than trying to get people to switch to all electric (EV) cars.
Car manufacturers should be making more hybrids right now instead of the push to make electric cars. Hybrids are realistic; EV’s are not. The infrastructure to support electric cars isn’t even close to being able to handle more EV cars on the highways.
Re-charging at highway stops, which can be few and far between, can mean hours of waiting before a charging station is available and even more hours for charging – the average charge time is 3-8 hours. Who wants to spend half a day killing time while the car recharges. Plus, there’s a charging fee and its fossil fuels that provide the electricity.
Gas is now over $5 a gallon. Gas stations in California, Washington State and Oregon are already being reprogrammed to accept double digit gas prices of $10 per gallon.
The Interstates are still full of trucks transporting all the food, household goods, and supplies we are used to having. The cost of their diesel fuel is also at all time highs, and that means the cost of everything they haul is going up.
Prior to 2021 gas averaged $1.95 to $2.46 per gallon depending on the state.
There’s a lot of finger pointing, blaming, shifting accountability, and deliberate untruths about why the gas prices increased so quickly. So I decided to do some sleuthing for facts about what happened in 2021 and 2022 to get us to this point. Here’s what I found:
In January, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order to pause the leasing of oil and gas on Federally owned lands. The result was a reduction in available domestic fuel supplies.
He also signed an executive order in January 2021 to revoke permits activated by President Trump in 2017, for the Keystone XL Pipeline that brought oil and gas to America from Canada. That went into effect on June 9, 2021.
Until then the pipeline brought 560,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries in the midwest and 700,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries in Texas. We no longer get that oil. Those refineries are now shut down.
At the end of 2021 the Department of the Interior implemented new fees and regulations that increased the cost for companies to do onshore drilling for oil and gas reserves. Those increases became a disincentive for further exploration and companies stopped drilling, which further reduced supplies.
In May of this year President Biden canceled a 1-million plus acre oil lease in Alaska, eliminating another rich resource of fuel. This is a very clear path of absolute facts. When you reduce the supply, the price will go up. And even more alarming is that we could have fuel shortages in the future which would be a disaster for winter heating needs.
The path I found reflects a deliberate political agenda. High gas prices are not because of Covid, or Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or supply chain disruptions. It’s trying to reduce reliance on fossil fuels before alternative sources are readily available.
Yes, there is definite greed by oil companies. But it’s politics more than greed that is causing this misery for so many people.
President Biden says there is nothing he can do. Wrong! He could reopen the supply sources he shut down. Instead, this administration tells people to buy electric cars. The average price of a new electric vehicle is $60,054. That’s no solution if $5 per gallon of gas is a already a financial hardship.
“Electric cars aren’t pollution free. They have to get their energy from somewhere.”
Alexandra Paul
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Best piece on this topic seen to date, thanks for writing it. I’ve only one thought to add…since oil is a global commodity, the price we pay for a barrel of oil at any single point in time is pretty much the same no matter where we buy it. However, If we buy that oil from Saudi Arabia, the money now resides in foreign hands. But if we buy it from West Texas, the money stays in the states. Such differences effect trade deficits and/or trade surpluses