I love those low gas prices as much as the next guy. But the sad thing is, as gas price goes down, so does consumer interest in hybrid/alternative/clean or even public transportation. People tend to quickly forget about problems until the next wave comes around. And when it does come back it's always too late to do anything. So repeats the cycle of inaction and gripe. Is it me or is this reality?

 

Welcome to GreenHybrid. As a suggestion, post an introduction in the "Introduction" forum. The term "smart diesel" seems contradictory but I have read some recent stuff about research efforts. Note that research does not always escape from the lab.

As for human behavior, I would recommend reading Skinner's work on conditioned response. It turns out that the price of fuel is to many people a random, re-enforcement reward. Skinner pointed out that this type of reward system leads to the most difficult to extinguish behavior. The reward for having a fuel efficient vehicle is not tightly coupled to the price of fuel ... unless you have a larger view of the life and time.

Bob Wilson

 

Prices have been hovering between $1.19 and $1.25 for the last week. Here in cold and windy Casper.

 

Ah. I remember Casper. I had one of my best runs a couple of years ago from Cedar City, Ut to Casper - around 59mpg driven by a West wind on my way to the Black Hills of SD.

Back here, gas has bounced back up to over 1.70/g. I think I read that a Calif. refinery is being taken off line which is what they did a couple of years ago. Sly fellows, these capitalist.