Driving barefoot (which I like) means you're more sensitive to gas (and brake!) pedal, I think. I do it sometimes when racing.
About the demand/supply thing, Ray, well, yes, it's a bussiness, but then
everything is a bussiness. As you accept, there is a real shortage, for many reasons, not only oil fields exhausted.
I'm an hypermiler by nature and I've done what I can for the people around me to do the same.
I have a Goat (Pontiac GTO) but I bought the kit for "she" to run on gasoline (for the track!
)
and natural gas (NGV). So, if I have an old car, with a large engine, not the most efficient in the world (but one of the more durable there are), how can I claim I'm a hypermiler? Simple and complicated at the same time, follow me for some minutes, if you wish:
As Colombia has a huge supply (for 20 years or so) of NGV and the price is half of gasoline more or less, I'm paying around 1.50 dollars per gallon for this car, which is a bargain: I get to pay what I could pay driving a Prius, but I have a classic car with a powerful V8 hemi that everybody watches. It's totally original, all parts have been replaced by me or by my beloved mechanic, that probably loves the car more than I do and has been working on it for 20 years.
I don't care too much about the mileage, I have had this car for 25 years now. I use it sparsely, I really care more about "she" than anything in this world except my family.
The most important thing is that I live 7 blocks away from my wife's work and children school. I work at home. So, I spend around 10 dollars per week on gas, sometimes less.
My wife's Sentra does something like 15 km/liter (30 miles per gallon) and it's one of the most economical and powerful engines (for it's size) that I've seen, no wonder many people use this model (coupe) for drag races (110 hp for a car that weighs 1 ton and it's really cheap). You can do 13 seconds for the quarter mile easily and it's really one of the most economic and trusty engines I've seen. I don't touch the car, everything is done at the dealer shop. Besides, my wife drives like a crazy woman and she also doesn't allow me to drive it frequently. She zigzags among the traffic as almost all colombians do, something like the Milan style of driving...
I drive mostly in a city, coasting all the time. I drive slowly on city streets, I'm not like my wife: I've done road maintenance, when young, and I have seen too many accidents in my life. It's not a funny thing, let me tell you.
Add to all this that
in Bogotá we have the ridiculously low top speed (city wide) of 60 kph and it is more or less well enforced.
In Colombian highways, top speed is another ridiculously low 80 kph. No wonder accidents have gone down in half since the speed limits were put in place.
Besides,
in Bogotá (and in most colombian cities) we have in place a restriction called "Peak and License" (or Pico y Placa in spanish).
It works like that:
You CANNOT drive your car during peak hours two days per week. That is, on Monday, cars with license plates ended in 1-2-3-4 cannot drive from 5 am to 9 am and from 4 pm to 7 pm. This means that during peak hours traffic is reduced 40 percent, so the traffic jams are slight, thus less gasoline spent.
On Tuesday, cars with plates ended in 5-6-7-8 are restricted. On Wednesday, cars with plates ended in 9-0-1-2, etc, so you have two days in the week when you have to use public transportation (we have one of the best heavy bus systems in the world) or share your car with your neighbor. It's not voluntary, it's enforced.
Heavy bus system in Bogotá
In some cities (smaller than Bogotá, that has 8 million people) you're restricted only two days: plates ending in 1-2 on Monday, 3-4 on Tuesday, etc. This system is used for taxis also (in Bogotá, that is, they're restricted one day in the week, there are too many taxis here).
Every year the numbers are moved forward one day. People has adapted to this system after they revolted initially: it's much more "democratic" than restrictions based on tolls (which place a heavy burden on poor people).
We've also built a large "cycloroutes" system in the city and we are part of the "Day without car" cities.
"Cycloroutes" in Bogotá
I have to confess
I'm really proud about the "colombian system".
The price for gas was the result of a study in which I participated, as well as the "peak and license" system. This means that my country is well prepared for the situation we live now and we have more than doubled the speeds during peak hours compared with the former situation (from 11 kph to 30 khp).
That study (made in 2000, in which we predicted 100 dollars per barrel in 2007
) made our country to build a huge Natural Gas infrastructure. It goes for more than 1.500 km, from the northern tip of Colombia, where the natural gas fields are located, to almost all the country, even the southern border with Ecuador. This means Colombia is one of the countries that burns less natural gas in oil wells. We actually EXPORT it to Venezuela, which, having so much oil, IMPORTS gas from Colombia to drive the machinery for their own oil wells in Maracaibo Lake (!
).
Chuchupa oil field, that produces half of the NGV used in Colombia until 2030
To my friend Belatti I have to say that we followed closely their example for NGV, one of the best systems in the world for NGV that I know. We're following their path (I am a consultor for some gasoline and gas distributors, like Shell and Terpel, a national firm).
Finally, Colombia still produces enough oil for internal consumption, but has not enough refining capacity, which explains why
natural gas prices are kept artificially low: the cost of a new refinery outweighs the benefits of "milking" people for natural gas.
Another reason, beyond the refinery thing is that
you reduce the load on the electric grid, because at those natural gas prices everybody has a kitchen, oven, water heater and even clothes dryers that run on it. I pay around 15 dollars for all my natural gas comsuption in a month (for a family of four), while I payed around 70 dollars a month using electricity.
Another important thing: all city blocks are classified in one of six "stratums": 1 for poor people, 6 for rich people (my house is classified as 4). The price of services varies according to the "strata" of your block, so poor people is subsidized by rich people higher tariffs.
On top of all that, as my country is really mountainous and we have a lot of water, most of the electric grid is powered by hydroelectricity. Add the fact that we have a mild weather, so almost no houses (except for the lowlands) has heating or air conditioning.
I wonder if other countries can learn something from us. No wonder that if you rank the countries by their impact on the world environment, Colombia comes on top (I'm dead serious about that, I have no time to search for the site, but I've seen the world classification, I'll do it later).
mmm... about farts powered F1 cars... what about having a "bean stew" powered push to pass button? 
