[Rayman4449]

No doubt it's a multifaceted issue. One key issue is, the known world reserves of oil peaked around the late 80's early 90's and we are on the downward side of the bell curve. With this fact plus China and India coming up, we are going to rapidly run out of crude oil. The politicians and oil companies know this and like it or not the market is what's going to and is driving the innovation and push to other forms of energy... i.e. high gas prices. It's an unfortunate truth that few people will look for more efficient vehicles or alternate forms of powered cars like all electric (which is how I want to go soon for my commuting back and forth from work) unless they are forced to. As I see it, there is really an incentive to raise and keep the prices high now to get people moving off of crude oil energy. It's not going to be fun, but it has to be done, so in some ways I'm glad to see prices have stayed up there. There are a lot of new types of vehicles about to enter the market, some all electric etc. One company is talking with paring with a new startup working on a Hyper capacitor that would allow for a 100mile or so travel and a recharge rate of 4-5 mins. You could stop at a station, plug in and be gone in minutes.

http://peakoil.com/index.php - this site indicates US production peaked in the 70s and has been going down ever since.

 

[Rayman4449]

Good points, they will have to increase capacity in transmission and generation no doubt if a move to all electrics starts to happen. No worries, they will do it, they have to. If not, wait till the first brown-out happens and see how fast they jump on the problem. One thing will be that most people will be charging in the evening when electric demand is normally at it's lowest point. Fuel? Hopefully we continue the march towards more wind and solar over time. In the short term it will likely mean more coal and nuclear but I look at it this way, if I'm using all electric, I will be for the most part using 100% made in the USA power. Will also be saving good money as it costs a lot less to go a given distance on electric than it does gas.


Raymond