Auto Sales Hit New Record as Americans Buy More Gas-Guzzling Cars

[ScienceRocks]

Auto Sales Hit New Record as Americans Buy More Gas-Guzzling Cars


https://www.scientif...-guzzling-cars/

Americans' appetite for trucks and SUVs drove auto sales to new heights in 2016.

Major automakers and analysts put the final tally slightly above 2015's record 17.5 million vehicles sold as stronger-than-expected December sales figures rolled in yesterday.

Amid low gas prices, Americans are continuing to choose bigger and less fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs over passenger cars. An increase in sales of the bigger vehicles of around 7 percent in 2016 over 2015 offset a decline of up to 8 percent in sales of small to medium-sized cars, according to data provider Autotrader. It was the industry's seventh straight year of gains, although analysts cautioned that growth may slow in 2017 as automakers retool production to better match consumer demand.

The increasing popularity of gas-guzzlers has contributed to a continuing rise in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and a plateauing of overall fuel economy, even though automakers are successfully increasing the fuel efficiency of even their least fuel-efficient models every year to meet federal fuel economy standards.

The average fuel economy of new car sales has stayed at roughly 25 mpg since the fall of 2014, despite a slight peak this summer, according to the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute.

Well, I guess Americans like their gas driven cars a lot still.

 

[miketx]

too bad you aren't an American and can get one too.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

Good. I hope they bring back the Hummer.

 

[Eaglewings]

People are doing very well and can afford the gas now that Obama brought us back from hell...

 

[RGR]

Makes the old peak oiler half wits look pretty stupid. Or makes it more obvious to anyone else why they were a joke, as many of us knew back when they were whining about it.

 

[RGR]

Good. I hope they bring back the Hummer.

I owned one of those for awhile, an H3. It was okay, a bit low in the quality department, but a pretty decent off road machine.

 

[Old Rocks]

Peak oil is a fact. Unfortunetly, people seem to think that means no more oil. What it actually says, that as the cheap oil ends, you are going to have to pay more to get it out of the ground. So, when you raise the cost of gasoline a couple of dollars, peak oil moves way down the road. In fact, you can make peak oil go away completely by raising the price high enough to make gasoline from biological materials.

 

[Mr. H.]

Peak oil is a fact. Unfortunetly, people seem to think that means no more oil. What it actually says, that as the cheap oil ends, you are going to have to pay more to get it out of the ground. So, when you raise the cost of gasoline a couple of dollars, peak oil moves way down the road. In fact, you can make peak oil go away completely by raising the price high enough to make gasoline from biological materials.

There is no correlation between the cost of "getting it out of the ground" and the price of gasoline at the pump. There is no "you" who raises the cost of gasoline.

You should know this shit. Grow the fuck up.

Today gasoline is $1.50/gallon, not $2.15. 65 cents/gallon is taxes. Taxes that cost the collectors nothing.

Fuck you Old Farts.

 

[RGR]

Peak oil is a fact.

Sure. But only at the axiomatic level (extraction starts at zero, ends at 0, somewhere in between is a maximum number), and once the crazies got involved, it has nothing to do with the axiomatic perspective. Survivalists, gold bugs, misanthropes, environmentalists, everyone looking for peak oil to create their Rapture moment really screwed up the science (engineering, geology and economic) aspects of why supplies by definition will one day be more limited. Zealots have a way of doing that, and for some reason they latched onto peak oil.

Unfortunetly, people seem to think that means no more oil.

Or that they can claim their neighbor's young daughter as a 5th wife, them having "prepared" for the oilpoclypse with guns, gold and homemade claymores.

What it actually says, that as the cheap oil ends, you are going to have to pay more to get it out of the ground.

Do you recall Hubbert ever even saying the word "price" in his seminal 1956 work? I don't. He also didn't draw a bell shaped curve with a plateau lasting years at the top. Both of these ideas, along with some others, came along afterwards, because it became obvious pretty quickly that bell shaped curves don't work for crap, to predict oil or natural gas production.

So, when you raise the cost of gasoline a couple of dollars, peak oil moves way down the road. In fact, you can make peak oil go away completely by raising the price high enough to make gasoline from biological materials.

Too bad Hubbert didn't build in manufactured product elasticity to crude prices or volumes into his seminal work either. But for now, the problem doesn't appear to be revolving around substituting yet more liquid fuels of any kind for crude oil, but using batteries. Batteries rule! To drive 1000 miles in a day I still need gasoline, but for everything else it has become pretty irrelevant to my families transport needs.

 

[RGR]

There is no correlation between the cost of "getting it out of the ground" and the price of gasoline at the pump.

Of course there is. Feel free to research two topics, one is the economic concept of cost of the marginal unit of production, and the other is majority chemical feedstock comprising gasoline. By definition both of these concepts factor heavily into the price of gasoline.

 

[PredFan]

People are doing very well and can afford the gas now that Obama brought us back from hell...

Oh so it only took the idiot 8 years to do it?

The truth is that people are more optimistic now that he is gone.

 

[Mr. H.]

There is no correlation between the cost of "getting it out of the ground" and the price of gasoline at the pump.

Of course there is. Feel free to research two topics, one is the economic concept of cost of the marginal unit of production, and the other is majority chemical feedstock comprising gasoline. By definition both of these concepts factor heavily into the price of gasoline.

Can you explain to me why when gasoline was $1.80/gallon (after taxes) last year, the cost of "getting it out of the ground" was just as much as when gasoline was over $4.00/gallon?

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Auto Sales Hit New Record as Americans Buy More Gas-Guzzling Cars


https://www.scientif...-guzzling-cars/

Americans' appetite for trucks and SUVs drove auto sales to new heights in 2016.

Major automakers and analysts put the final tally slightly above 2015's record 17.5 million vehicles sold as stronger-than-expected December sales figures rolled in yesterday.

Amid low gas prices, Americans are continuing to choose bigger and less fuel-efficient trucks and SUVs over passenger cars. An increase in sales of the bigger vehicles of around 7 percent in 2016 over 2015 offset a decline of up to 8 percent in sales of small to medium-sized cars, according to data provider Autotrader. It was the industry's seventh straight year of gains, although analysts cautioned that growth may slow in 2017 as automakers retool production to better match consumer demand.

The increasing popularity of gas-guzzlers has contributed to a continuing rise in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and a plateauing of overall fuel economy, even though automakers are successfully increasing the fuel efficiency of even their least fuel-efficient models every year to meet federal fuel economy standards.

The average fuel economy of new car sales has stayed at roughly 25 mpg since the fall of 2014, despite a slight peak this summer, according to the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute.

Well, I guess Americans like their gas driven cars a lot still.

I can happily say my Truck will pass anything but a gas station.

 

[Old Rocks]

Makes the old peak oiler half wits look pretty stupid. Or makes it more obvious to anyone else why they were a joke, as many of us knew back when they were whining about it.

There is a peak oil. However, that varies by what the price is. There is far more oil available at $100 a barrel than at $35 a barrel. And people will buy more fuel efficient cars at $5 a gallon than at $2.50 a gallon.

 

[Old Rocks]

There is no correlation between the cost of "getting it out of the ground" and the price of gasoline at the pump.

Of course there is. Feel free to research two topics, one is the economic concept of cost of the marginal unit of production, and the other is majority chemical feedstock comprising gasoline. By definition both of these concepts factor heavily into the price of gasoline.

Can you explain to me why when gasoline was $1.80/gallon (after taxes) last year, the cost of "getting it out of the ground" was just as much as when gasoline was over $4.00/gallon?

Supply and demand.

 

[RGR]

Can you explain to me why when gasoline was $1.80/gallon (after taxes) last year, the cost of "getting it out of the ground" was just as much as when gasoline was over $4.00/gallon?

Seriously? The cost of production is X. But what I can sell it for is market based. If folks will pay $4.00/gal for it, then I'll sell it for that. If all I can get is $1.80/gal, I'll take that. In either case I make money, just not as much with one price as another.

 

[Sun Devil 92]

Makes the old peak oiler half wits look pretty stupid. Or makes it more obvious to anyone else why they were a joke, as many of us knew back when they were whining about it.

There is a peak oil. However, that varies by what the price is. There is far more oil available at $100 a barrel than at $35 a barrel. And people will buy more fuel efficient cars at $5 a gallon than at $2.50 a gallon.

We are aware of more reserves now than we ever have been.

Peak oil is a farce.

 

[RGR]

There is a peak oil. However, that varies by what the price is.

You are describing a supply cost curve, perhaps a resource cost curve depending on whether when you say "oil" you mean oil rate, or amount of oil reserves and resources. Neither of these are peak oil as described by Hubbert when he kicked off the idea in 1956. However, you are describing a concept that makes perfect sense, and is used by the likes of EIA and IEA, and is AVOIDED by peak oilers at all costs, particularly the resource cost curve. The instant they demonstrate that more volumes are available for a higher price, their entire argument vanishes.

There is far more oil available at $100 a barrel than at $35 a barrel.

Of course there is. But peak oilers won't admit it, it is all about bell shaped curves. And they don't come with a cost per unit attached.

And people will buy more fuel efficient cars at $5 a gallon than at $2.50 a gallon.

I wouldn't mention resource cost curves and economic substitution in the same post in any peak oil forum, they will likely ban you on the spot for knowing the basics of why their idiot ideas on peak oil look so ignorant.

 

[Old Rocks]

I guess anyone with basic knowledge in geology realizes what price and demand mean in dealing with minerals. Lithium is expensive, but at present, not expensive enough to mine the spodomene in the Black Hills for it.

 

[RGR]

We are aware of more reserves now than we ever have been.

Peak oil is a farce.

Depends on YOUR definition of peak oil. For the folks who just want it to trigger their personal rapture scenario, sure, peak oil is a farce. The axiomatic side of it is axiomatic, extraction of a finite resource begins at 0, ends at 0, and somewhere in between those two points has a maximum.

And yes, we have more reserves now than ever before, and we consume more than ever before. But the amount not just of reserves but in-place resources can be calculated, and it is a finite number, and therefore there will come a day. The good news? Energy experts are now figuring that improvements in efficiency, the push for more environmentally friendly power generation and transport fuels, peak demand is more likely to stop oil supplies from needing to increase, causing a peak oil not because of lack of supply, but lack of demand.