Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

One note here: we pay less for petrol than any other developing country, which makes it harder for alternatives to make economic sense.


Did you mean "developed countries"? Because I got tired of copying Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_and_diesel_usage_and_p...) after:

  Country        US$ / US Gallon
  U.S.           $3.74
  Vietnam        $1.03
  Yemen          $2.76
  Turkmenistan   $0.72
  Tunisia        $3.75
  Trinidad       $2.42
  Taiwan         $3.78
  Syria          $3.15
  Saudi Arabia   $0.49
  Quatar         $0.83
  Puerto Rico    $3.63
  Peru           $3.60
  Panama         $3.14
  Pakistan       $3.46
  Malaysia       $2.31
  Indonesia      $2.23
  Egypt          $1.17


He did mean developed country. The US pays about two-thirds what Australians do for petrol, who in turn pay about two-third what Europeans do for petrol.

The panic that the US gets itself into when discussing fuel prices is amusing to watch. Australia is a big country with spread out cities like the US (or even more than the US) and similar wage levels, yet we don't have problems with post-paying cash for our fuel. In six weeks of driving around the US west a couple of years ago, I never found a single place where I could post-pay with cash - they were all too afraid of drive-offs. Weird.

Also, you've mangled the statistics - for example, you've used Vietnam's price per litre against the US's price per gallon.


I never found a single place where I could post-pay with cash - they were all too afraid of drive-offs.

Many municipalities in the US have made post-pay illegal, so even if gas stations wanted to offer it they couldn't.


Excuse my ignorance, but what does "post-pay" mean?


Paying for the gasoline after you put it in the vehicle. At most gas stations in the US, if you want to pay with cash, you park your vehicle at a pump, go inside and prepay a certain amount, fill up your vehicle, and then go back inside to collect any money you didn't spend.


Thanks for the correction on Vietnam - I double checked and wasn't able to find another instance of mangling, but since you said "for example", I imagine there are others I missed.


Most of those are oil producing countries which subsidize oil locally, and several of them are not developing countries.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: