When we first arrived in America, some nine or so years ago now, petrol (‘gas’) cost a little over a dollar an American-size gallon. This summer gas registers at over $4 a gallon. That (for the mathematically challenged among you) means a price hike by a factor of four times. What’s more, much of that increase has happened within the last year. For a while beforehand gas prices had hovered more normally around the mid $2 range.
Of course, in England petrol remains far more expensive. But what matters for the impact on the culture is the differential. Petrol is still, when you calculate it all in terms of dollars to pound and gallons to litres, about twice as expensive in the UK as in the USA. But when we arrived the difference was far greater than that. Petrol in the UK was at least four times as expensive back in the late 1990s, if not rather more.
Changed behaviour
This much higher relative change in the cost of gas is causing some interesting switches in behaviour. The formerly ubiquitous SUV (= ‘Sports Utility Vehicle’, or mammoth 4 x 4) is not nearly as popular as it was. Everyone seems to want a hybrid, if they can get their hands on one, a car with a battery and a gas tank as well, with radically decreased fuel costs thereby, of course. You still see plenty of SUVs on the road, and ‘minivans’ (those people movers much beloved by families), but the new car market is tending to go smaller, and being taken over by cars with better gas mileage.
