Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Fill 'er up, go green!

Dragging the conversation back to the original topic......

Years ago I was in the south of France on a business trip, and for a rental car I had a VW Golf. After a week I needed to get gas. After filling up I figured out the cost per gallon in US dollars. It came out to around $5.00 a gallon. Now this was back in 1992, and I though that was rather expensive compared to what gas cost in the US. Almost all the difference in cost was taxes. This price difference is the same for most European countries (it's how they help pay for all the mass transit).

Over the years I get people saying that we need to come up with an alternative fuel, and then I think of my trip to France and how in Europe they pay almost 3 times what we do, and the only change they have made is smaller cars and higher use of mass transit (which is easier for them), in all this time no alternative fuel.

Electricity is an alternative, but it has a couple of problems (for me at least).
One, the extra drain on the local utility. I only see it as being green if you install a solar power system to offset the cars consumption. Otherwise you are just transferring the problem. I recently bought a Ford Focus for the Wife, and found out that Ford is coming out with an all electric Focus for 2013. One of the options for the car is a 2500KW solar system to help offset the cars electric consumption.
Two, a lot of taxes are generated from the sale of gas. If you have a electric car you are not paying any of those taxes (but still putting wear and tear on the roads). Now knowing our government I am sure they will come up with a way to tax electric cars to offset this. The problem is how they will go about imposing said taxes.