Yesterday, north of Burlington, VT, I noticed a fellow lowering the
sign-price on diesel to 2.72 per gallon ... 87 octane gas at that station
was 3.05 per gallon.
SamC
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Marshall" <mailinglist@FASTFORWARD.CA>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 2:23 PM
Subject: Re: What is it with the US? (No real van content)

> All very good points brought up.  Unfortunately I think the USA is
> going to go down a lot more before it goes up. The Canadian dollar is at
> 0.94 right now, three years ago it was 0.66 - we have gov't rebates on the
> top 10 most fuel efficient cars and Diesel cars are redly available.
> Here in Quesnel Diesel is 0.929 per liter and gasoline is 1.129 per
> liter.  I converted my wife's 1990 Golf Country Syncro from a 1.8L
> gasser that got 8L per 100km (the 2003 Ford Focus company car I have gets
> 10L! - some progress over 13 years!) to a TDI that now gets 6.5L per 100km
> - plus there is about 130hp and 200ft.lbs of torque - so a much more
> zippier car that I can drive 2x as far for the same amount of money.
>
> Hopefully things will change in 2008 when the current
> "leader" is no longer in office.  One can only hope!
>
> David Marshall
>
> http://www.hasenwerk.ca
> http://www.fastforward.ca
>
> Box 4153, Quesnel BC, Canada V2J
> 3J2
>
> On Fri, June 22, 2007 09:42, Don Hanson wrote:
>>
> Diesel vehicles dominate sales in the rest of the world..(debatable)
> They
>> are much more efficient at getting more miles per monetary
> unit and much
>> less polluting than gasoline..(debatable)  But our
> current Oil corporation
>> run administration keeps diesel vehicles
> from being economically viable
>> here in the United States..And
> yet, they reward wealthy citizens with
>> large tax breaks if they
> buy 'super-sized' vehicles..My brother in law was
>> just shopping
> for a new car and wanted to buy a diesel sedan, but after
>>
> shopping around, weighing the costs, he ended up with a CadillacK!
>> Because it weighed enough to qualify for a $6000 tax rebate!  WTF
> is with
>> THAT?  How do we let that kinda corruption exist in our
> government here in
>> the US?
>>   We recently watched Al
> Gore's "An inconvenient truth" dvd about global
>>
> warming..One point he made was that our US mandated minimum mileage
>> standards are almost the lowest in the civilized world, and by a
>> significant margin..
>>   He showed some statistics about US
> car sales, while making a point about
>> how conserving energy does
> not come at the cost of our economic health,
>> like Bush's Oil
> powered government would like us to believe.  Directly
>> related
> to US cars poor fuel mileage are their poor market share in the
>>
> world...Not only wouldn't most of our US cars not fit into most streets
>> around the rest of the world, but they also would be excluded
> because
>> they fall waay short of even China's mandated fuel
> efficiency
>> standards...
>>   When will we here in America
> wake up and stop allowing oil companies to
>> dictate what kinda
> motors we must use here?  When you gotta go to Canada
>> or Mexico
> to get a decent car, and then sneak it across the border and
>>
> drive it "on the sly"..something stinks...
>>   Sorry for
> the off topic..but not being able to find TDI motors..watching
>>
> the CARB rule against electric vehicles in favor of Hydrogen fuel cell
>> vehicles (then seeing the head of the CARB resign to take a
> position
>> with a....Hydrogen fuel cell company..) Not being able
> to purchase or
>> import a 60mpg diesel basic car, like is
> available world wide...that
>> stinks..
>>   Don Hanson
>>