What do you know about Romania?

[vortalexfan]

Actually in Europe, they sell gas by the liter, which is LESS than a gallon, so in Europe, when you're paying the equivalent to 5 or 6 USD for gas, your getting much less gas than we are here in the US when we are paying 3 USD for a Gallon of Gas, so technically 6 Euros/L is more of a ripoff than $3 USD/Gal, but $3 USD /Gal for gas is still very expensive when you go to consider that up until 2008 we paid a little over a $1 /Gal for gas in parts of the US, when in Europe they were paying the equivalent of $6/gal for gas at the time (which was actually 6 Euros /Liter.)

A little bit of a conversion factor here, it takes about 3.8 liters to make a US Gallon so when you factor in the fact that the average SUV gas tank is 20 Gallons (which is equivalent to roughly 76 liters) 6 Euros into 76 Liters is roughly 456 Euros you're spending to fill up the average SUV gas tank, whereas in the US to fill up a 20 gallon gas tank at about $3 a gallon is about $60 and you compare that to the 456 Euros which is equal to $505 USD there's a huge difference!

Now when we are talking a $1/gallon for gas which is what we paid for gas here in the US for many years, if you had say a 16 gallon gas tank (which was the average size of a gas tank on an average American Sedan up until the early 2000s) and you had gas for about $1 per gallon you were only paying $16 USD to fill up your gas tank, when compared to Europe when they were paying $5/liter to fill up a gas tank, which the equivalent 16 gallon gas tank here in the US would be about 60 Liters you're paying 300 Euros which is the equivalent of $332 USD which is still a huge difference!

So in the US we do have a right to complain about higher gas prices because first of all we never had to pay any more than $40 to fill up our gas tanks for many years until about 20 years ago, secondly with the way our country's roads and citys and towns are laid out we have to travel further to get from place to place and so driving is essential for getting around in our country more than it is in Europe so in Europe you guys can get away with paying a lot more for gas than we can here in the US (unless you live on the east or west coasts where mass-transit is more common) which is why it doesn't make sense to be making the average American pay $4/gal for gas in the US.

Also going "all electric" with cars in the US doesn't make any sense either because electric cars don't have the capability to travel hundreds of miles like gas powered cars do and also when or if your job relies on you having to tow heavy trailers behind you, your electric vehicle loses almost 40% of its battery life when pulling heavy loads which is why using electric motors on stuff like Semis (Lories as you call them in Europe) is NOT practical and also its not practical to use electric motors on full size pickup trucks (or pickup trucks in general) because they are often times used to pull campers/RVs which require a lot of engine power to haul (especially 5th Wheels.)

Also since the US was kind of the Pioneer of Electricity we have some of the oldest electrical grid systems in the world and so our electrical grid is NOT up to the task to handle millions of Electric Car Charging Stations all across the country, in fact California the most "Progressive" (read regressive) state in the US was one of the first states to try and enforce an electric car mandate and the state's 130 year old electric grid can't even handle the demand of all of electric cars being charged at once and so the governer of California has had to put a limit on who can and can't charge their electric cars and when they can or can't charge their vehicles in order to avoid black outs and brown outs, and that's just the State of California.
If you did that all over the USA you could imagine that the whole USA would be experiencing black outs and brown outs that could potentially last days or weeks on end because our country's 130+ year old electrical grid would not be able to handle 200,000,000+ cars charging at once!

Europe is a little different in that regard because everything is spaced a lot closer together and Europe's Electric grid is much newer than the US's so it could handle going all electric (plus far fewer Europeans drive to work than do Americans because of the readily available mass transit systems in Europe which is non-existent in the US, and because in Europe because of the much shorter distances between towns and cities bicycle is a much more feasible method of transportation on a regular basis there than it is in the US.)

Just a little side by side comparison of the US and Europe when it comes to transportation costs and abilities.