Now that we in the United States are whining about high gas prices again, I wonder what people in other countries are paying.

We are somewhere around $3.75 USD per gallon. That varies somewhat daily and depending where you live.

Nothing to do with pianos unless the prices keep me home playing more instead of joy riding or taking long trips.

Just curious.

I read in the Times that SUV sales have plummeted 25% recently. It's about time.

Unleaded is going for $3.50 a gallon today in Lexington.

When I tell my students I can remember when gas was just 30 cents a gallon they look at me like I'm hopelessly ancient.

I hate to admit it, but I do remember when I first started driving...5 gals for a buck... oh the GOOD OLE DAYS...lol

then waiting in lines at something like $0.75 gal

oh ya...$3.65ish SouthEast Michigan

Between about € 1.35 and € 1.50 per litre (depending on grade) in Germany, so, per US-gallon (3.6 l), that would make about US$ 7.50 to 8.40.

Could also affect delivery charges of new pianos.

$3.79 in Milwaukee, WI today

The most expensive price I have seen so far here is £1.30 for a litre of diesel.

So converting litres to gallons, and £ to $, I make that:
$9.13/gallon.

(although our country is much smaller than USA, it still hurts )

OUCH!!!

I am feeling somewhat lucky after seeing gas prices elsewhere. Although at about $3.70 it still hurts.

it's pretty much around $3.50-60 here. i wish i'd have a hybrid to drive...

I drive a very rare VW Jetta wagon TDI This little turbo diesel gets an avg of 50 mpg!!, and that is the average!.

It is very spacious inside being a wagon and being a diesel, the torque is incredible. I am always the fastest car going up steep hills.

The VW jetta's that are diesel (TDI), are the most fuel efficient vehichles you can buy (other than the Golf TDI) . They get MUCH better gas mileage than even the toyota Prius because of the "catch"

The "catch" is that in the past, automakers fuel economy reports were based on driving 55 mph on the highway. Realistically, who drives 55 on the highway??

The diesels "sweat-spot" is right around 70mph when cruising. Because of the torque of the diesel, it easily makes up for wind resistance.

Other "hybrid" cars are fantastic in the city where they can utilize the braking energy but on the highway going realistic highway speeds (70-80mph), they start to fall WAY short.

The Toyota Prius highway mpg has been adjusted this year to only 41 mpg highway as opposed to the 61 once claimed.

The other "catch" is that diesel cars will NOT show up on anyones list of "best GAS mileage cars" since they do not run on gas!.

They CAN (and many do) run on pure vegetable oil and other bio-diesel fuel.

I'm really not sure why american farmers don't go back into business growing corn for bio-diesel fuel. It would put many farmers back in business, the fuel produced would be 100% american produced and there would be ZERO emmissions from the cars!

In europe, Volkswagon makes a little diesel car called the Lupo which gets 70 mpg. Also, the original Smart car (which uses a tiny diesel) also gets in the 70+ mpg range but of course the U.S will NOT allow the importation of the diesel Smart cars due to its impact on the us auto makers!.

Diesel costs a little more now, but that's only from a marketing perspective. Diesel is SO much cheaper to produce since it is MUCH less refined. This is why diesel in the past (since early man) has always been much cheaper to purchase. It used to be this way with skim milk too until skim milk became the in thing!.

Anyway, even at $4.00/gall, getting 50 mpg (with a heavy foot) still works for me!

BTW, You can still buy a VW Jetta TDI in a sedan version but they stopped making the wagon in 2005. You can or course buy used ones.

Volkswagon is putting out a new little diesel wagon later this year called a "Sport-wagon" which is essentially a Jetta wagon in the new body style.

The price will be in the mid to upper 20's. Not bad for a 50 mpg spacious car!.

Down here in Florida, I am paying $3.74 !

I remember renting a car in Europe (I think it was Brussel, but I might be mistaken) before 2000, and paying just under a dollar for gas, and then after I filled the car up I realized that the price was per LITER, not per GALLON. So, now we pay for the just about the same as poor Europeans were paying for it a decade ago. Just puts everything in perspective for me...

What upsets me is that the price of gas isn't being driven by supply demand issues, but its speculator commodity buyers that are manipulating the market...

Also the oil companies claim that are just passing the cost to the consumer, yet they are making windfall profits.

Just hope the price can stabilize for a while. Its killing the little guy and hurting the economy big time.

Some say $7 a gallon in the next few years...

Here is a photo of the 2008/9 VW Sportwagon TDI.

No joke here is it Euan? The price seems to rise every other day though it is a tad cheaper in the south, diesel was £1.19 a litre this morning. I wouldn't like to say it is still the same tonight. The petrol/diesel differential is now 10p a litre, in favour of petrol. I get an average 50 mpg max from my diesel{Mazda 3}which includes a lot of short about town journies. Well, it did, my son now walks home from school and I do more and smaller shopping trips by shanks's pony. It isn't just fuel prices {including gas and electricity in the home} that are rocketing in the UK. The cost of staple foods has also increased. Winge over. LOL

{gotta laugh or cry really, one feels so impotent}

Some say $7 a gallon in the next few years...

Heck Mark I would {almost} cheerfully settle for 7$ a gallon.

£1.19 x 1.95 = USD 2.32

USD 2.32 x 3.78 $/gal = $8.77/gal (about twice the price of diesel in the USA right now)

It has a lot to do with how you drive. I drove my relative's 2003 Prius for 170 miles of mix highway and city (with A/C on), I got 59 mpg.

I suspected that prices were much higher in many countries. Thanks for the perspective.

I can easily remember 30 cent per gallon gas and even though I should be hardened to new prices, it still takes by breath away when I can put 40 USD worth of gas in my Miata. I'm glad I never bought into the SUV thing.

I don't think the size of the country has much to do with how much the price hurts your wallet.

One of the worse things I do on my drive into work, is calculate how long I have to work that day to just pay for my gas to get to and from work... it gets more depressing each week... I drive 80 miles round trip, and I have a decent car for MPG (around 35).

I used to drive a truck, and decided that the first hour of each work day was not worth paying for my trip. I got rid of that 2 years ago... now with the higher prices, I'm back to working the first hour just to pay for my trip.

Very depressing... need closer job

I filled up in Virginia Beach, VA this weekend for $3.20/gal. After reading the other posts on this thread I consider myself very fortunate!

BTW--There is a web site, GasBuddy.com , that lets you type in a zip code and shows you the lowest local prices. Very Helpful!!

Make that $4.94 a gallon (USD/CAD) here in Kanada.

The lowest I ever saw when I was but a young brat was $0.34 a gallon but that was a lonnnnng time ago

It was $3.97/gal 2 days ago but it's higher in San Francisco proper. Luckily my husband and I work from home, so no commute (and no traffic headaches.) I have been much more conscientious about combining errands and decreasing driving ever since last year when prices started to go up. We are contemplating replacing my 12-yr old Nisson sedan with a Prius.

There are many people around SF area who commute 1-1.5 hrs each way! I feel really bad for them, even before the rise in gas. Now it's so much worse. And this is not to mention food prices soaring too.

Mr.Hunky, in the Oct. 07 issue of National Geographic, there were some very informative articles on corn ethanol (E85). It turns out corn E85 isn't as much of a wonder solution as the media makes it sounds.

Part of the success in Brazil that is used as a talking point to promote E85 here is because in Brazil, they use sugar cane for E85. For every 1 unit of fossil fuel energy put in to produce sugar cane ethanol, 8 units of energy is produced(vs only 1.3 units energy output for corn ethanol.) The Greenhouse emission of production and use for sugar cane E85 (compared to gaoline) is 56% less. For corn ethanol, it is only 22% less. There is a lot more info in the article, e.g. land use issues, etc.

Anyway, I am very much a greenie liberal. But after being informed by the article, I have second thoughts about E85 being a major solution for us in the US.

I'm all for bio-diesel. My brother is a mechanic and thinking about going to Sweden (or maybe it was Switzerland or Norway, not really sure) to take a two week course on manufacturing bio-diesel. The big problem with where we live is that it tends to turn into a gel in the colder weather. Some say you can do a mix of regular diesel and bio to counteract that issue. I think my brother was telling me that the guy who invented the diesel engine (named Diesel) actually designed it for use with plant based fuels, but that the auto manufactures adapted it for use with petroleum instead, in the interest of oil companies. Not sure if this is true, though.

That is TRUE.

That's true, but it's my general impression that a lot of Europe is reasonably covered by public transportation...whereas only a small percentage of the geographic area of the U.S. is covered by any public transportation at all.

And it will take years and years before that gets caught up...if ever.

Every day on the news I hear the reporter say "highest gas prices in the nation are to be found in San Francisco". My car is supposed to take premium, but I've downgraded a notch; even so, the price is still well over $4.00.

I must drive from gig to gig - I'm on the road several hours every day, and must pay bridge tolls too...

I also notice a new trend - gas stations are charging for air! I have a slow leak in one tire, which equates to a slow leak in my wallet.

The rise has a fundamental cause, called PEAK OIL. Easy to find oil is running out, or has already. It will get only worse, and surely ! So we better PREPARE !!
www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
is a quite mild site about that. I know much more radical...

By the way, it seems to me most US-ians were much too willing/accepting of auto-commuting and dispersed living like "Desperate Housewives" ;-);-)
Us Europeans had compact cities started when cars weren't there ;-)

The typical popular Romanian-made car is the Dacia 1410 or newer Logan. Originally a copy of Renault 12, then upgraded, and again, in last 8 years with injection engine. Burns ~6-6.5 l / 100 km. Normal-sized to largish and underpowered (60 HP) for today's European cars, smaller than usual US monsters. Cost new $3500 a few years ago, the current version is 6000-8000. This is NOT the Tata Nano ;-)

... Still I don't forecast so expensive electricity for electronic keyboards to stop working so we remain only with acoustic instruments... back to 19th century !

In Milwaukee, I saw that start in the late 80's, I remember a buddy of mine (who had been going thru some tough times) exclaiming, "25 cents for air!!? Yes!! Now I can finally breathe!!”

I always smile a tad when I see news of Americans complaining about their gas prices. Now that you see what we pay in Europe I hope you understand why I think it is amusing

I can't blame you though, as it's human nature. I recently moved here to Spain from the Middle East (I'm originally from Sweden). In Saudi Arabia gas was about US$ 0.20 per liter. I later moved to the United Arab Emirates where the price 0.30. Well, that's 50% more expensive and I didn't like it The UAE then decided to raise it by 30% which didn't quite cause riots in the streets, but people where not happy.

I, for one, hope oil prices continue to rise! Our planet is sick people, and I'm afraid that nothing but a thin wallet will make us change our habits.