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California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

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Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#191
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries have $15k new electric city cars for sale. The US doesn't. Our domestic car manufacturers are either uninterested or unable to make them, and import bans are in place on foreign cars that meet that price point. Also our infra not being 240v is hurting us. The rest of the world can just plug in overnight to any regular outlet and it is good enough for almost any commute. My EV on a 120v outlet I can ma…

I think most of the US has 240 to the home. Look at your power feed, if there are two insulated conductors on an uninsulated line, those are two 120V lines of opposite phase/polarity. I have a friend who temporarily ran a 240 volt welder by plugging into a custom outlet box, wired with two plugs that went to two outlets on different legs of the breaker box. Electric ovens, ACs, hot tubs, dryers, etc. are all commonly…

Its not that 220v is missing, its that its special.

An unmodified garage in australia will have plenty of unused 240v plugs

and if they did want to modify, they can pay to have 3-phase 415v

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#192
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries have $15k new electric city cars for sale. The US doesn't. Our domestic car manufacturers are either uninterested or unable to make them, and import bans are in place on foreign cars that meet that price point. Also our infra not being 240v is hurting us. The rest of the world can just plug in overnight to any regular outlet and it is good enough for almost any commute. My EV on a 120v outlet I can ma…

Most residential mains is 240v on two legs that gets divided to 120v outlets. However, major appliances like dryer/HVAC will use the 240v. I had a 240v outlet added to my garage for larger equipment. It is absolutely possible to add a 240v charger at single family homes with a visit from an electrician. The US standard of 120v is not an issue.

It adds large cost and is a hassle

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great for people and the environment. Too bad its production is now in danger thanks to horrible, ignorant decisions by this administration.

[flagged]

And economically regressive.

I'm not sure I would point the finger at "green movements" though.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#194
post #68
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In such a situation - especially heading into the midterms - an export ban may be increasingly probable.

An export ban wouldn’t really help much: US oil production is (now) predominantly light crude, while US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela. We produce more oil than we use, but we can’t refine it all.

> An export ban wouldn’t really help much: US oil production is (now) predominantly light crude, while US refinery capacity is oriented towards heavy crude from the gulf or Venezuela.

That's not too much of a problem. A refinery tooled for heavy sour crude technically can process light, heavy, sour and sweet crude - the other way around would be an issue because you'd need to construct hydrocracker and desulfurizer stages first.

The issue is a financial one. A refinery is often a multi-billion dollar asset, and having significant parts of its value sit around unused for prolonged times means write-offs which means stonk number go down, and as we all know there is nothing more important for the economy than the stonk market.

Another, but smaller, problem is that running a refinery on different crude compositions means that the volume ratio of the various oil products changes, and the refinery may find itself sitting on more, say, heavy fuel oil than it can store, sell and ship. And once the tanks are full, production has to stop.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but do you recall what LA looked like in the 80's? The gas is more expensive but the unseen cost of that level of pollution is very high. The gov can solve all future gas problems with EV subsidies and manufacturers can help solve this problem by making affordable EVs, but getting the current admin or manufacturers to do either seems like a cruel joke at this point. The fed is going as far as to deny Chinese car…

Not everyone in California lives in LA or has LA’s problems.

> Not everyone in California lives in LA or has LA’s problems.

That's why smog rules vary per county.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices just shot up over a dollar nationally and no one is burning anything down. The real "let them eat cake" is the biggest polluters externalizing the costs of that pollution down to the people, all while the state is dismantling the EPA and clean energy. Imagine if we had real public transportation across the nation. Less pollution AND cheaper for the average person. Wonder why that isn't happening.

> Wonder why that isn't happening Because the US is overwhelmingly urban sprawl and is not Europe. The only way to fix this is to tear down and rebuild (which we cannot afford), or accept that public transit wait times are terribly slow due to the distance between stops. Combine that with a lack of nerve to aggressively combat crime or antisocial behavior on transit, maybe a fear of perpetuating inequality or somethi…

> Because the US is overwhelmingly urban sprawl and is not Europe

That's a bad excuse

a) because Europe isn't one single demographic but still public transport is useful, reliable and safe everywhere (from Dublin/Zurich on the low side of the population density scale to London/Paris/Madrid on the high side and Amsterdam/Hamburg/Prague in the middle).

and b) there are plenty of examples outside of Europe. Melbourne is urban sprawl. The metro area is 50 miles east to west, 30 miles north to south (more, but there's also a big bay) and a population of only 5 million. A lower population density than the Denver MSA but manages to run a train/bus/tram system that's useful, reliable and safe.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the US has 240 to the home. Look at your power feed, if there are two insulated conductors on an uninsulated line, those are two 120V lines of opposite phase/polarity. I have a friend who temporarily ran a 240 volt welder by plugging into a custom outlet box, wired with two plugs that went to two outlets on different legs of the breaker box. Electric ovens, ACs, hot tubs, dryers, etc. are all commonly…

I fully understand the 240 vs 120 in US houses. The difference is other countries have 240 running everywhere. So apartment garages can have cars charging (slower than the max possible speed but faster than if they were on 120v), without tens of thousands of dollars in retrofits. I just got an estimate of 3k for running basically 6ft of conduit for a new 240v line in my own garage (my breaker is right next to my door…

That’s insane. I just paid $800 for a much longer run, materials and labor.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had to do any work on my EV in the 2 years I've had it. I'm due for a cabin air filter change in another couple years. So yes the bike is costing me more in maintenance! It is hard to compete with 0.

Does the eBike have a monthly payment plus a required insurance policy? The EV still costs way more to own which is the most important factor

Definitely, the car costs more.

But speaking purely in terms of maintenance, costs are nearly 0.

Assuming I don't but a pot hole, the tires will last me 7-8 years at minimum (I drive a bit under 3000 miles a year).

Brakes are barely used with an EV.

Insurance + tabs is my largest cost.

I bought my EV cash a few years back when prices were super low thanks to hertz offloading their fleet.

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this confuses me. I was under the impression that every electric oven and clothes dryer in the US was 240 (220) volts already. I was not aware or tracking that 240v was an issue. Is that the case in places in the US?

Nearly all US homes have 240V to the electric panel, and some have it for specific places in the house (though many places are almost entirely gas dryers/ovens), but you would need a special outlet run to charge your car at 240V since almost all regular receptacles are 120v. Even the heavy duty receps in garages and utility spaces are most often just 20A/120V instead of the standard 15A/120V. Quotes for a new 240V li…

I've run 2 different 240v lines in my house, to code, for the cost of the wire and the breaker. It isn't hard. :)

Re: California leaders report four to six weeks worth of gasoline and diesel supply

#200
post #42
post #31

I'm a bit perplexed on this one-- Yes, we refine our own blend of gasoline, but it's based on market oil -- nothing about the war we started with Iran impacts our domestic refining capability. Also, oil takes longer to get from Iran to the west coast than to the east coast. Shouldn't the east coast be the first to notice decreased shipments, because the west coast essentially has a stock still in transit for longer?…

Weirdly California doesn't get all of its gas from domestic refining. https://timesofsandiego.com/state-region/2026/04/23/prices-c... "California’s top foreign refinery supplier of gasoline and blendstocks this decade is Reliance Industries Ltd.’s Jamnagar refinery complex in western India. " "More than 9 million barrels arrived via this loophole in 2025" Now, that's a tiny fraction of the 320M barrels of gas used in…

It's beyond belief how much California imports...

> [California] imports about 60% of its crude from overseas--up from 5% in the mid-1980s- about a third of which comes from the Middle East. About 15% of the state's refined fuels are also imported, much of which depends on Middle East crude.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/gavin-newsom-california-offshore...

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