American households spend 16% of their income on transportation, while European 11% on average.

https://itdp.org/2024/01/24/high-cost-transportation-united-...

In absolute numbers the gap is considerably wider due to differences in salaries. And all that while cars and fuel are significantly cheaper in the US.

In the co-working space I rent there are around 50 parking spots and half as much bicycle stands. In the warm period between the solstices the latter is packed and I have trouble finding a stand.

I started cycling mostly because they removed the free gravel parking area not counted in the usual spots, but I've found I don't miss driving as much as I thought I would.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

That being said I estimate that in Europe people who genuinely need a car in their day-to-day lives are closer to 40-45% of all commuters. It was noticeable in the first days of the Hormuz Strait crisis, when the government fuel subsidies didn't kick in yet.

If heating oil is still a thing where you are, compare its prices to diesel (especially historically). They’re nearly the same product, the difference is almost entirely fuel taxes.

If you’re caught running red diesel on a normal carriageway, the penalty can be steep.

Filter your diesel through cat litter in your garage and fill up your £60k mercedes.

Feels like extra work I would really enjoy doing and also the wonderful smell.

And I can probably re-use the cat litter for pesticides, so i don't need to worry about disposing of it.

But otherwise i would probably recommend against it.

And it's not the same liquid. From first principles maybe, but not after it has gone through the supply chain until it reaches you.

Anecdotical evidence from decades ago, when I had an oil-fired oven for heating. With a big barrel in the cellar, which you let fill by hose from a truck maybe once a year.

And hand pumped into a can every few days, and carried that up, to fill the tank of the oven. One year I was rather broke, and that barrel empty. And then came winter.

Thought I'd be smart, because it's just the 'same stuff', right?

Walked to the Aral maybe 200 meters away, filled a canister.

That 'same stuff' made the fire drum clog from the inside with the finest carbon, like those mushrooms which grow like disks from the side of trees.

That never happened with just oil. And that was normal Aral diesel, nothing special.

One can also notice a difference in smell with older cars. Just oil stinks more.

Anecdotal reference, my children's school is roughly 3 miles, so I spend a gallon of gas every day with 2 round-trips.

That number was zero in Netherlands because all schools are either walkable or bike able.

Supermarkets and restaurants are 5 miles away easily.

Heck, my neighbor (door to door) is 0.4 miles.

You get 12mpg?

It's the USA, so he's probably dropping the kids to school in a pickup truck...

[1]: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/50104.shtml

My last commute in Germany was 1.5 hr one way and some of my colleagues had 2.5 hr commutes. Hybrid hours though.

Is that right? That seems absurdly high even for a large ute.

12mpg! What do you drive?

I can squeeze up to 40mpg on interstate if I drive slow (under 65mph) and it's typically about 20-25mpg within the city but the ride for School specifically, I'm not sure what's going on there.

Maybe its not truly 1 full gallon so not 12mpg but a little over that like ~18mpg.

Whatever shortcomings there are in US society, it's not perfect in the EU either. That US freedom and infrastructure looks OK to me.

So if EU somehow magically got the same amount of gas for 100% free, we'd at most pay some 25% less than we do now, and it would still be more expensive than US.

This weird jingoism serves no one.

We do have bike paths over that routes but it's just not safe for my kids yet. The road they need to bike along allows up to 65mph.

In the Netherlands I just had to cross a 30km/h road (down to 20km during school hours and pedestrians always get first preference) to drop them. Netherlands is just too satisfactorily safe ♥

Apple asks the same amount of money afaik, the difference in EU is the tax, so...politicians.

Possibly the EU is pulling ahead on price per mile now with the shift to EVs.

(household elec is about 30-35c/kWh, public charging stations for electric cars often charge 60-70c/kWh, no joke, although I think some vendors now offer 40c charging with a subscription)

If they did all their charging at 70 they'd probably lose on cost to a US car (or a German diesel) but be equal to a German petrol car.

I think Germany has a cultural thing with smart meters which are mandatory for the ultra cheap charging available in many EU countries but it appears that you can get still those rates in Germany and pay about half what you quote, expanding the gap with the average US cost per mile.

I’ve got a Prius Prime and only at around $4+ a gallon does it start to become cheaper to charge than just use gas since the gas engine is so efficient.

This is from a recent PG&E bill from my house:

Peak pricing: 0.48575 delivery + 0.14920 generation = $0.635 kWh

It seems to have gone down a bit this year though. These are the numbers from 2024:

Peak pricing: 0.53 + 0.183 = $0.71 kWh

The US is already the largest producer of crude oil in the world.

They took first place around 2018 and is currently ~30% above no. 2 (Saudi Arabia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_extra...

We don't have cool trains and double-deckers that you guys are accustomed to. Different can of worms, I know. Our own doing.

1 USgal is 3.78L, and so US$ 4/gal is a little under $1/L. Convenient comparison page:

* https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

[1] - https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-oil-price-myste...

That's dirt cheap.

Also I would argue it's maybe better for the US to use smaller cars, since it thus becomes quite cheap to drive. Also this would probably make the roads safer, as bigger cars (mostly) equal unsafer cars (and shit drivers, but that's just my opinion tbh).

A lot of Europeans do drive as much as Americans do, like me and truckers etc. Having 2,34 a liter here in NL makes that a pain in the arse.

Also: using more fuel on average doesn't invalidate that American fuel, compared to Europe, is dirt cheap.

Edit: also wanna add there are many 'American' cars on the road here, like Ford F-150s etc. They are imported, but have the same fuel consumption as the US variant, as being the same as the US variant.

I'd say the Netherlands is the exception here, almost all such cars that I see on the roads (mostly in France) are from the Netherlands, along with some from Belgium.

They are also mostly driven by maniacs apparently.

Optimistically, it drinks about 11L per 100KM. Stop and go will severely increase consumption.

It's a large car to you, but it's kind of midsize here.

But question: why drive that car, with that milage, while you could have a slightly smaller car with better milage? I just don't get that.

I am long time VW driver. I've had several GTIs, have driven the Rabbits, the Corrodos, the Sciroccos. My fave was my '95 Driver's Edition GTI, the one with the the golf ball for the manual transmission knob.

Things have changed. I have a mini bear 120 lbs Akita. 2 bikes that fit nicely in the trunk of the Atlas (mine is Cross Sport), so that we don't have to deal with hitches and bike racks. I've spent thousands on Thule bike racks and don't like the experience when backing up and maneuvering, the constant beeps and near panic attack level alerts.

We also live in Miami, where biblical level floods are at least twice a year. The clearance helps. My wife refuses to drive a sedan, because they really float down the street when it rains, you might as well get row paddles and a sail. And, I won't risk driving my EV (Hyundai Ioniq 5) in such conditions. It's the states/urban planning fault, but here we are. Even the Atlas's clearance isn't much help in these conditions, I've seen lifted Toyota trucks just slide into the canals.

In addition, and I can't tell what's the chicken or what's the egg, but we don't have access to inexpensive utilitarian vehicles in the US. The manifucatures dropped low margin vehicles, everything is luxury this or that, that includes European brands that export to the US.

I love small cars, it's that we only have a few on the market, and the ones that remain don't make sense financially. My 2010 Mini Cooper was a hoot to drive, I drove it with my Weimaraner (RIP Lotus) coast to coast twice with room to spare.

while in the USA it's about 10-20%

These numbers look too low. When I lived in North Carolina a few years ago, seemingly every other vehicle was either an F150 or a Ram or a Silverado, and that's not counting SUVs. The US is not a monoculture.

Also the Netherlands where I live is very expensive, while Sweden it's 0,50 cents at least lower.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W...

Make $200 per gallon of diesel? This has the potential to collapse entire economies. Shipping will be more expensive, which will in turn make everything more expensive. Food will be more expensive too, tractors use diesel. Few things don't depend on diesel at some point or another.

Tax only the fuel used by cars? Many people still need their car to work, not every job can be remote, at $200 a gallon, you may as well quit, unless you get paid the difference, which again will increase the price of things.

Maybe a few decades from now, if could be $200 a gallon without breaking everything, but certainly not now.

What will actually happen is literally everything will get more expensive.

They can keep taxes on refined petroleum products low in order to not destroy the present economy, while simultaneously fostering a budding renewable energy industry. USA is the second largest producer of renewable energy in the world behind only China. California + Texas by themselves rank 6th in the world.

Also will be interesting what happens when the SPR runs out.

A bit of exaggeration there.

Ohh wait…

I suspect the price will be directly subsidized to keep folks happy. Since we’re in wacky world this subsidy will be inconsistent depending on where you are.

Blue States will be left with gas going to 6$ or more and Red States will probably have prices subsidized down to 4$.

That one alone is over $100 per person per year, so we all paid extra, even those who don't drive.

Even with all that we're still at $4/gal.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/08/trum...

Looks like the gas stations are selling at cost or taking a small loss.

Oh wait.