MIGHT NOW BE A GOOD TIME TO CONSIDER FUEL ECONOMY?

The Energy Information Administration produce a useful series, comparing nominal and real gasoline prices dating back to 1976.  For all of 2021, they reckoned the nominal price of a gallon of gasoline at $3.10, that has to be a national average, and it averages over all sorts of state consumption taxes.  That's off the all-time high, which came in 2012, when the national average nominal price was $4.39 per gallon, converting to $3.63 in January 2022 constant dollars.

That site might be worth bookmarking, dear reader, and an observation I made in 2008, with the annual real price sitting at what we call $3.26 per gallon in January 2022 constant dollars, stands up pretty well.

At $4 or $5 a gallon, many people are going to want something else. But there are depressingly many commentators who would have you believe that opening the Outer Continental Shelf or the Arctic Ocean to exploration (both of which I endorse) will bring back that $1.50 a gallon unleaded regular. Unlikely. If those sources were worth developing at those lower prices, the political pressure to permit it would have been present at those lower prices. Permanently higher gasoline prices are also where the reward to innovation will come from -- not from public investments. Battery-electric cars and other technologies do not make economic sense without permanently higher gasoline prices.

The increased oil extraction that was possible under the previous presidency, and remains, in modified form, under the current presidency, did not restore that historically cheap motor fuel of the American High.  Whether at existing levels the incentive to improve battery-electric cars, hybrids, and more exotic power plants is strong enough remains to be seen.