How is the proposed system different from computing the cost per gallon by taking the flat rate and dividing it by the typical usage, and using that amount under a conventional billing model?
Either way, it has the same basic properties of "cost is flat over time if you continue to conserve" and "you'll pay more than your neighbours if you use more than them."
> So you think like this: "distance from point A to point B is 250 miles, my car gets 25 miles to the gallon, so I'll use 10 gallons, 1 gallon price is $3.00 so it'll cost me $30.00". Easy as pie.
That's why. It's exactly the same thing you're talking about.
The pricing should penalize over-consumption. Let's say the first 10 gallons of gas per week are taxed at a certain rate, the next 10 gallons a higher rate and so forth.
I understand that, but I'll take an average even at the benefit of the distributor rather than per minute pricing. Imagine if we had to pay for gas by per second.
But if one station is charging 3.69 and another is charging 3.39, should I assume that the one charging more actually paid 30 cents more a gallon, or have that much more for expenses? Or are they making an extra quarter gallon? right now I can go buy regular for anywhere between 3.20 and 3.80, for no apparent reason.
If the profit margin is really only a few cents a gallon, it seems like there should be a big incentive to simply charge an extra $0.05 a gallon.
I've also noticed some stations charge way more for regular, but the same for premium... They just don't have as large a spread, which would in courage people to buy premium.
This is an Oregon, too, where there is a unusual situation for gasoline since people aren't allowed to pump their own and it has resulted, for some reason, in significantly fewer filling stations.
Interestingly, if we add an offset tax to gasoline it'd only be 30 cents a gallon for inefficient capture (a lot, politically, but not harsher than living in your house for a year). With newer capture technologies it could be closer to 4 cents a gallon, which is less than the price difference between gas stations.
The second-order effects are that once you build thousands of these capture stations there's huge financial upside to making them even better.
I should probably have specified marginal cost. If I did my math right, it's a fraction of a cent per litre on the margin. The fixed costs are a large part of that total price.
Yea, based on the eia data it should all be ballpark but the calculation is there mostly just to serve as an example. You could shave a little off gas-per-fillup in retrospect because very few people will use 15gal exactly and few new car gas tanks are over 15gal but the $3 service charge balances that out somewhat. Based on the map on their site, it looks like their margins might be slimmer than what I calculated but they succeed by having a lot of customers in a very small area that they serve.
That sounds reasonable but I wonder how well it'll work. Gas here in SoCal is over 5$ a gallon and people still driving massive cars paying over 100$ per fill up. It's nuts!
Either way, it has the same basic properties of "cost is flat over time if you continue to conserve" and "you'll pay more than your neighbours if you use more than them."
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