American’s just don’t get it, and I fear the masses won’t internalize our national dependency and the need for alternative energy sources until it is too late.
This is not a rant about global warming – that is another discussion for another time – this is simply pointing out that American’s just don’t get get that the price of oil will rise once again. Just because it’s $38 today doesn’t mean it will be $38 tomorrow.
According to edmunds.com, pickups and SUVs will outsell cars in the month of December.
Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn’t happened since February.
Meanwhile the forecast finds that sales of hybrid vehicles are expected to be way down.
Combined with discounts negotiated at the dealership, the actual prices consumers pay can be amazingly low, said Edmunds.com sales analyst Jesse Toprak.
“I can get about $10,000 off a large SUV,” he said.”There’s probably not going to be a better time.”
He is right, he could get roughly 10K off an SUV but what about when the price of gas goes back to $4/gallon, be it a year from now or three years from now?
Let’s say a large SUV has a tank size of roughly 20 gallons and gas goes up to $4/gallon once again. This means the consumer will be paying $45 more per fill up. If we assume they fill up the tank every week, that means they will spend an extra $2340 per year and if 4 years that “savings” would have vanished.
Now is the worst time for oil to have fallen because everyone, from corporations to the consumer, will be moving away from researching and investments in alternative energies because there is no cost savings. Why spend the money on research and development if it costs less to simply buy oil?
Now is the time we should be moving to hybrid technologies, now is the time the nation should be going to solar and natural gas… basically, now is the time we should be looking forward and attempting to find a way to free our nation from dependency on foreign oil, not trying to go back to our old ways.
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3 Responses to “Oil prices could not have fallen at a worse time…”
You’re exactly right. With the fall in prices and the credit crunch, domestic oil and gas investments are drying up at a rapid pace. This lack of investment is reducing new domestic exploration to a slow crawl and slowing investment in alternatives to negligible amounts.
The high prices we saw in July were the peak of a commodities bubble driven by the devaluing of the U. S. Dollar.
Now were seeing the flip side of that coin with the prices being undervalued from hyperventilation over the slowing world economy.
Expect prices to begin a steady climb to the 80 to 100 dollar range once or economy enters recovery.
For now though, our politicians seem to be forgetting their promises of energy independence.
Completely agree with you!
It’s all about long term vision here and no one seems to have it when it comes to energy.
Thanks for stopping in!
[...] said that Oil could not have fallen at a worse time because the U.S. Consumer has a short memory. They are back to their old ways, starting to purchase SUVs with no regard to the fact that oil will once rise again. [...]