Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Possibly literally. ;) :D
I would, but it's 2,900 I don't have.

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Where can you find one for 2,900? Around here they're almost 5,000!

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

People selling them used.

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

First off, this isn't to knock Mr. Dessingue... but more to... throw some ideas out there. This is perhaps a little off topic... but I'm going to say it anyway.

First off, the prices will go down, and soon. I define "soon" by the end of the summer. Gas prices always peak in the summer, and they go down in the fall and winter. Here's a graph for those of you that like pictures:




Now, let's talk about the Segway for a second. 6-10 miles on a single charge. That means that you're not going any place that's farther than 5 miles if you don't want to do some walking on the way home. If you're getting 15 miles to the gallon with your car, and gas prices have jumped by 40 cents a gallon... your round trip cost is an extra 27 cents over what it did when gas was "cheap." (This is neglecting the small cost to charge your Segway.)

Assuming that you stop driving your car completely on these 5 mile back and forth trips, you need to drive 2,175 of them to make up the cost of your used $2,900 Segway at $2.00 a gallon of gas, in your 15 miles/gallon car.

And if you could be driving at 30 mph instead of the 10 mph riding on a Segway, you'd have saved an extra 1087.5 HOURS. You need to put a value on your time.

I guess my conclussion is that I think buying a Segway to "save money" is difficult task to accomplish unless you're willing to wait QUITE a while.

It's a cool toy to zip around on, cool to do some repetative warehouse tasks on, deliver the mail, or maybe even to zip to the local store to pick up a loaf of bread, but it's just not the transportation replacement that it's decked out to be. It's niche market of people who need to travel over a mile (but under 5 miles) repeatedly is very small in the general public. I think that we can admit that if this wasn't Dean's invention, it'd be long forgotten by now my the vast majority of FIRSTers, and it certainly won't be impacting the temporary gas spike that happens every summer in the United States.

And those are my comments of the day.

Matt

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Matt,
I love you maaaaaan. ;)

Sorry.... something came over me for a second there.

John

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Matt-- You have some fine points....

But-- i'd like to add the cost of auto insurance...

I own a segway, not a car... i do NOT pay $2000-2500 a year in auto insurance.

I have access to a car during the summer months (while i'm at home), but i try to use it as sparingly as possible, as the cost of gas is so high. I get around town just fine on the segway, and i've driven 200+ fewer miles than i would have without the segway... all the little trips to the store and the library and such add up...

So in conclusion, the segway replaces my car during the winter months, and it aids in my saving money during the summer months. And about the "time" factor.... any time spent having fun gliding on the segway is free... as in-- there is nothing else i'd rather be doing than going someplace on the segway... well... *almost* nothing else :)

This solution won't work for everyone as Matt pointed out, but don't discount it!

Tom

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Who tries to go around and say "first off" twice?

Unacceptable.

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

I heard today that about $10/bbl of the price of crude can be attributed to the "fear factor" resulting from the mess in Iraq, the recent attacks in Saudi Arabia, etc. The same interviewee said that about 30% of the price of gasoline is for the crude that it's made from. The biggest reason that gas prices are increasing is that demand is increasing due to all the high consumption vehicles in the US driven increasing numbers of miles, and the rapidly increasing number of cars in China and India. Diesel is cheaper than gas, even though it takes more crude to make, because the demand has not increased as rapidly as the demand for gasoline and refinery capacity for diesel is more in line with demand.

More on-topic is that, today, I filled my VW Jetta TDI with "Children of the Swamp" diesel. That's 179. I got only 46mpg on this tank which took me about 600 miles.

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Of course I must add:

Segways are awesome! Around cities, for commuting, and here's and idea... if you could commute to work on a Segway (suggested maximum travel of 8-miles one way), you could rent a car to use on the weekends and save a lot of money in the long run.

I just learned of a few more used Segs are available for 3k-3.5k, let me know if you're interested.

ByE

erin

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

This is true- I am commuting to my job this summer on an HT... distance from my house 5.4 miles

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

The number of barrels OPEC can produce was recently rasied by 2.5 million barrels per day. Could this drop gas prices slightly? If the gas prices do not drop another 2 million barrels will be added to the current quota. We can certainly say that someone is trying to lower gas prices.

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Gas prices in southern maryland have dropped. Gas was once 1.95-2.00 and i just paid $1.87. thats here but what about where you are?

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Where I had earlier posted about.. I was back in that area today (Benton, PA) and paid $1.72 the gas stations were mad houses for out of towners traveling through... people were filling up multiple gas containers. :eek:

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Here in Merrimack, NH gas is just over $2.00. I haven't had a problem because I haven't been driving to school. I could fill my 95 Toyota Tacoma at the begining of the week and be good. But with the summer comming up next week I'm gonna be driving more. Kinda scared for how much gas I'll use just driving to work everyday.

However, $1.66 would be nice for gas....

Re: Has the price of a gallon of gas reached your team number yet??
 

Gas prices around here are falling slightly... the last few weeks have been fairly steady at $2.159 or more, now we see some of the stations 'round here as low as $2.019, usually hovering around $2.099...