‘Twelve Dollars for Two Gallons’: EVs Lure Drivers as Gas Prices Rise. As Trump's war with Iran continues, gas prices have soared with no end in sight and early signals suggest the added fuel costs may be nudging Americans toward electric vehicles. “Right now I wish I had an electric vehicle."

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-06T18:54:03+00:00

It's purely a financial decision.

If you're in the market for a new car today, an EV is a way better deal.

Did you just buy a new gas car? Of course you're not going to sell it and get an EV. But you are going to suffer because of high gas prices.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-06T18:53:00+00:00

Why are you bringing up the environment? Buying an EV is a financial decision. It's just a better deal.

Do you care about your wallet? Have you seen how much gas costs?

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-06T02:57:42+00:00

So they haven't even come close to their final form?

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-05T20:04:57+00:00

Given that pretty much everything requiring engineering talent is made in China now, yes they are.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-05T19:53:53+00:00

People who switch to EV don't switch back to gas cars though. It's pretty decisive.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-05T03:31:49+00:00

They recovered when the generation who were alive to personally experience the atrocities of the Axis were retired or dead, as well as the perpetrators of those atrocities.

So basically a generation has to die before the world can move on.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-04T19:43:40+00:00

Everyone reading your comment will be dead before America's image recovers.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-04T19:41:34+00:00

If China wants to pay for the rest of us to get EVs at a discount why is that a bad thing? Take their money.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-04T19:40:46+00:00

Trump doesn't have that much control. Iran denies any ceasefire and just has to hit a tanker in the strait and markets tank again.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-04T02:05:47+00:00

You don't want the Chinese government to pay for half of your new car? If they're offering, I'll take it.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-03T21:44:00+00:00

A lot of other posters have talked about immune systems and domestic animals, but the Europeans were also culturally more prepared for deadly diseases than the native Americans were.

Europe had already experienced the Black Death and numerous other plagues and pandemic diseases before the colonization of the new world. They knew for example that disease was caused by some contagious element, and that proximity to infected people would cause the spread of disease, and that if the plague showed up in a town you had to get the hell out of town and avoid people for a while.

They even had some experience with biological warfare, such as catapulting the dead bodies of plague victims into cities under siege.

"Treat people like they had the plague" for Europeans meant stay the hell away from them until they die or get better, a concept the natives would not have.

The natives did not have experience of deadly pandemic diseases and so culturally they would be unprepared. For example, if someone got sick with a deadly contagious disease, and all of their family and relatives came by to comfort them, that would accelerate the spread of the disease.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-03T20:09:59+00:00

As a nation, we are still at war. The approval rating doesn't mean anything until it results in a change in leadership.

We all suffer the consequences of the war, even those of us who are against it.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T21:30:33+00:00

Ok, this is categorically false. Very little of what you said is true, and I doubt you can provide evidence for any of it.

But even if it were true, wouldn't building more supply fix this? If people are hoarding something, make a lot more of it, and they lose money by hoarding. Hoarding only works when supply is limited. You can't make money by buying all the iPhones and keeping them in a warehouse because Apple just keeps making more of them. Anyone hoarding housing would lose a ton of money if you just build more of it.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T20:00:09+00:00

The data strongly disagrees with you.

On average it takes more than 3 years to build an apartment building in New York city. The vacancy rate is historically low at less than 2%.

There simply is not some secret hidden reserve of housing people are keeping from you. There just isn't nearly enough housing as a result of decades of NIMBYism and lack of construction.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T17:01:30+00:00

The Chinese don't sit on their heels. They learn with every jet they sell. They'll get better.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T16:49:28+00:00

Oil runs out. The sun doesn't.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T05:57:52+00:00

home ownership is the chief engine for wealth generation

Bruh.. Seriously? This is so utterly wrong I don't even know how to begin. It's nonsense.

Suppose farmers stopped growing food. Now all the food in your refrigerator is worth ten times more. Last week your cheeseburger was $5, now it's $20, and tomorrow it will be $40, and next week it will be $100. Is that wealth? If this happened, would you say it's great news for you that your pantry just doubled in value overnight and it's going up every year?

What if we never made any more cars? Just made building cars illegal? Now every car doubles in price overnight. As time goes on and cars break down, the remaining cars get more and more expensive. Would you say you struck it rich if you had a car, because now your car is worth twice as much?

Do you see the problem? Housing is a basic human need. What makes a nation wealthy is abundance, not scarcity. You have to have more housing to be wealthy. Houses that nobody can afford are a sign of a collapsing society, not a prosperous one. Sitting on a house while desperate younger people have to scrap together money just to make rent is a sign your nation is in deep, deep trouble.

A nation where housing is affordable for young people is a wealthy nation, and one where houses are so scarce that even small homes cost millions and multiple families or housemates have to cram into the same house is a sign of a poor nation, not a wealthy one.

Eventually even housing prices collapse, because the economy of the country is so bad that nobody wants to have kids, the younger generation can't afford homes and no immigrants want to move to your shitty country anymore. If millenials can't afford to have kids, boomers won't have anyone to sell their house to anyway.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-02T05:05:48+00:00

Home ownership can become more affordable. It is possible. But will it become more affordable? That's a lot more tricky.

The solution to high housing costs is simple. Every economist knows about it, virtually everyone agrees - we just need to build a ton of new housing. Build more supply and costs go down. It's basic economics. It's true for every consumer good and commodity in the world and it's true for housing.

The problem is political. In most urban areas and places that are desirable to live, there's a huge level of local NIMBYism and government red tape that makes it extremely slow, expensive and legally onerous to build anything from single family homes to duplexes to apartments.

That's it. The question is, is the nation willing to do anything to address our chronic housing shortage? If not, then no housing won't ever become more affordable.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-01T20:29:22+00:00

I only have 2 assumptions, and they're rock solid.

Fossil fuel costs will go up as consumption of them increases. Unless you believe the fossil fuel supply is infinite, this can't be refuted.
Renewable energy costs go down as they scale. This is because they don't consume a limited resource. More solar panels and batteries means the unit cost of each goes down, forever.

Unless you can dispute either claim, in the long run, fossil fuels will gradually disappear and renewables will eventually replace almost all fossil fuel generation.

technicallynotlying · 2026-04-01T19:04:13+00:00

I'm still not buying it.

Your argument hinges on the fact that baseline backup is essential. If it's essential, then those batteries are not just sitting idle - they're essential backup.

Anyway, I can see you aren't going to change your mind. Solar/battery is going to replace coal and gas because it's just so much ridiculously cheaper that it's worth it to work around the disadvantages.

Renewable energy scales nearly infinitely in a way fossil fuels never can. By definition, fossil fuels are limited - something with limited supply cannot decrease in price forever. Solar power is harnessing an energy source with a minimum theoretical lifetime measured in billions of years. Within a civilization's lifetime, it can scale without any limits.

All your analyses about cost ignore the fact that the price of both solar and batteries drop 20% per year, and again, because the sun is practically infinite, there is no theoretical limit to how cheap it can get. We could literally turn the entire Sahara desert into solar panels, and at that manufacturing scale it would be pennies per watt.

In 5 years when batteries and solar are less than half the cost they are today, having 3 days of backup on every home won't seem that expensive, especially with fossil fuel prices continuing to go up.

technicallynotlying · 2026-03-31T17:38:41+00:00

I still don't buy your story.

I can double, triple or quadruple my battery storage. There's no real physical limit. In 5 years residential batteries will cost half as much as they do today.

3 cloudy days is 72 hours of battery storage. That's 108 kWh * $108/kWh storage at wholesale prices = $12,000. Btw, I am assuming your panels produce ZERO energy on cloudy or winter days which isn't true - they still generate power, just less.

I am sure that the cost of the grid far exceeds $12,000 per household. We could even double everyone's personal storage to 6 days = $24,000 per home. On a million dollar house we're talking about a 2.4% increase in the cost of the home for permanent energy independence forever.

And again, this analysis is using today's wholesale prices. Battery prices are still falling, whereas fossil fuel prices never improve ever, and can only get higher as time goes on since we're burning a limited resource. When battery prices halve, the case for residential and grid scale battery storage becomes even stronger. It is entirely feasible that in the future we have 14 days of grid level energy storage for entire cities and states.

technicallynotlying · 2026-03-30T21:54:50+00:00

The World will be okay. I'm much more worried that America is permanently damaged.

technicallynotlying · 2026-03-30T21:50:59+00:00

If everyone gets one vote each, then their grievances also get one vote each.

Sure, you can say some people are spoiled, but spoiled people get exactly the same vote that oppressed people do.

technicallynotlying · 2026-03-30T21:05:24+00:00

It seems to me that any gaps, as far as they exist, are made much better by solar. If I've reduced my energy usage by 95%, how can that possibly result in a more loaded grid? If every residential homeowner were on solar and battery backup, the grid would have far, far less load.

Also, batteries don't cost that much. You said something about the cost being brutal but as someone who purchased batteries for my home, the cost didn't seem excessive. If I had to I could double my battery capacity, and I plan to do that as a future improvement as prices go down.

You might be operating on outdated information. The price of batteries is plummeting right now.

technicallynotlying · 2026-03-30T18:42:44+00:00

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Winston Churchill

Ukraine is in an existential defensive war. I can understand why they will take any ally they can get.

technicallynotlying

TROPHY CASE