So it's nice that Musk has such lofty goals. Frankly, it's always been his forte. He leaves the "how to get there" to other, more little people. Like with an idea to build 100,000 cars per year by buying an idled assembly plant from a U.S. automaker. He'll leave the whole "design a mid-size sedan for it to build" to other people. Musk's an "idea man," ya know. And for an "idea man" the reality of building 100,000 mid-size sedans is kind of like trying to build a "kabillion" mid-size sedans — they're both impossible numbers when you don't even have a working design.

He also thinks gas should cost $10 a gallon. Hmm, we wonder why. Keep in mind it's not that we disagree with Musk, we just happen to believe it's also probably the price-point in which a $100,000 Tesla roadster becomes a good investment versus a sports car with similar performance. [CNet, Twitter]

[via GasBuddy]

Average gas prices in the U.S. peaked last July at a price of $4.12 per gallon before starting a rapid descent. Bad economic news and high unemployment timed out with the normal season decline and prices plummeted. Between mid-September 2008 and and the end of December prices dropped more than $2.00 to a low of $1.61 per gallon. Prices have slowly climbed, as indicated in this chart from GasBuddy, until this month.

Since the beginning of May, prices have started their seasonal rise reaching $2.45 per gallon this week. Compared to the last few months it's been a quick climb and, despite hopes to the contrary, it has yet to stop. Why are prices rising?

When determining the average price at the pump you've got both current supply-and-demand and projected supply-and-demand to contend with. What frustrates most people is when the current supply/demand ratio favors the buyer, as it does now, and the price continues to go up. This is primarily to due to the projected supply-and-demand.

There's lots of oil out there now and demand, though it will likely increase as we approach the peak of summer and the economy slowly improves, is low relative to the supply. But oil suppliers, specifically OPEC countries, will continue to keep production and delivery of oil low until they reach the point they want. OPEC says they're hoping for crude oil to hit $75 to $80 a barrel, up from the current price of around $66 a barrel.

Because of the uncertainty, price trends on a day-to-day basis remain in flux. The lowest gas price by city, according to GasBuddy, is Tuscon, Arizona at $2.16 per gallon, and that price is down $0.027 from yesterday. But of the ten cities with the lowest gas prices, seven stayed at the same price or increased their price. On a state-by-state basis, gas prices remain highest in Hawaii ($2.69 per gallon) and lowest in South Carolina ($2.28 per gallon).

Ten Lowest Average Gas Prices by City
1. Tuscon, AZ $2.163
2. Houston, TX $2.264
3. Salt Lake CIty, UT $2.272
4. Columbia, SC $2.274
5. Corpus Christi, TX $2.276
6. San Antonio, TX $2.277
7. Birmingham, AL $2.286
8. Atlanta, GA $2.299
9. Virginia Beach, VA $2.300
10. New Orleans, LA $2.301

Overall, it looks as though gas prices will continue to generally trend upwards this summer unless we're overwhelmed with bad economic news, supply magically increases or demand drops dramatically. If there's good news on the horizon it's that few analysts believe we're going to be able to reach crude oil prices of $145 a barrel anytime soon, meaning $4.00 a gallon gas may also be far away.

Photo Credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

[Gas Buddy, The Gaurdian]

An as-yet-unidentified system glitch resulted in the $81 billion charge which was only discovered after Zamora was informed his credit car had been maxed out, a couple billion times over. After arguing with Paypal's broken-English service division in India, Zamora was eventually able to convince the creditors he hadn't filled his Camaro up more than 3.1 billion times (or alternately gas hadn't gone to $5,920,060,866 a gallon) the charge was removed. Juan's moral of the story: "Pay cash." [Consumer Energy Report]

We make no allusions to intimately knowing the intricacies of the global oil production system and the resultant pricing flim-flam, but recent pricing has given us pause. The price of a barrel of oil closed below $34 yesterday, which strikes us as odd since in the late 1990's, such prices correlated to per-gallon prices at the pump between $1.25 and $1.50.

When we fueled up yesterday, prices for regular unleaded where between $1.89 and $2.00 — depending on what state we were in. Now, we aren't saying there's some kind of grand conspiracy to bilk the consumer by desensitizing them to high prices and then leaving prices at artificially high levels once oil prices fall, but the historical record makes it hard to not be suspicious. [Graph courtesy pf SeekingAlpha]

Thanks to the huge spike in the price at the pump in the first half of the year, SUV sales are down more than 40% in 2008 from 2007. In response, the not-so-Big Three have closed many plants dedicated to making SUVs, a product that has come to symbolize their perceived inability to produce the vehicles American consumers want to buy.

Writing on his New York Times "Freakonomics" blog, Steven D. Levitt asks the question:

“The apparent cause of death for SUV’s was high gas prices. Doesn’t that mean that with low gas prices SUV sales should come back to life?”

Levitt goes on to suggest the reason SUV sales haven’t recovered is both a fear gas prices will rebound as well as a belief: “When gas prices got high, it became uncool to own an SUV.”

The SUV may be dead, but the humble pickup truck doesn’t appear to be suffering the same fate — because, for many buyers, trucks aren’t a fad, they’re actually a useful vehicle.

Keep in mind that in the current market problem of a lack of credit is being seen across the board — sales are down for every single vehicle in the marketplace. So the way to determine sales strength at the moment is to peg one vehicle's sales drop to another. So, while sales of the historically top-selling Ford F-Series pickup are down 25.4% for the first 11 months of 2008 compared to the same time period in 2007, they’re only down 18.4% when comparing November, 2008 to November, 2007. That's a lower drop in sales than that seen by the Toyota Camry, down 5.3% over the first 11 months of the year, but down 28.7% during the this past month.

So what does that potentially tell us? It would seem possible that the recovery in sales can be pegged to gas prices; as the economy collapsed in October, gas prices fell and consequently, pickup truck sales began to increase, and the sales of mid-size econo-sedans dropped. But, what we're also seeing is while some SUVs have recovered sales, for the most part, they haven't quite followed that same number, and appear to be continuing their decline.

Indeed, that trend can be tracked across other popular pickups and cars. The Chevy Silverado was only down 22.5% November to November while the Honda Accord was down 38.1% and the fuel-efficient Toyota Prius fell a staggering 48.3%.

What does this all mean? It appears that while people do stop buying pickups when gas prices spike, they’re more resilient long term than SUVs because they’re more useful. When gas prices drop, it looks like Americans still want to buy bigger vehicles, but now, they demand actually utility from their trucks, either by necessity or fashion.

The larger picture? Throughout the whole Carpocalypse, American automakers have always been building the vehicles Americans wanted to buy, it’s just they weren’t building the vehicles Americans thought they could afford to own.

[via The New York Times, data: Automotive News]

OPEC President Chekib Kheli told reporters "I hope we surprised you. If you're not surprised we need to do something about it." Be careful what you wish for President Kheli. The big surprise is the energy markets don't seem to care with crude prices dropping 4.5% to $41.64 a barrel. So no need to trade-in your Excursion yet.

The drop in production is, in the eyes of the market, not large enough to counterbalance the decrease in energy use by a recession-weary populace. Gas prices may continue to rise slightly after January 1st when the change becomes effective, but the economy is still so bad people aren't using as much black gold as before. We're trying to process if this is good or bad news. H/T to Jason for the tip!

Photo: ALI AL-SAADI/AFP/Getty Images

[MSNBC via Truckblog]

Average Gas Prices Per Gallon From Friday
• Detroit, Michigan — $1.76

• Houston, Texas — $1.78

• Atlanta, Georgia — $1.88

• Boston, Massachusetts — $2.01

• Chicago, Illinois — $2.10

• Washington — $2.19

• Los Angeles, California — $2.22

[Source: CNN, Photo: Whitney Curtis /Getty Images]

It turns out it is. GasBuddy currently lists Oklahoma City as the U.S. community with the cheapest price per gallon — $2.78. What a choice for consumers — fill up your tank or fill up your 401k. Frankly, you'll probably go farther on the tank fill-up.

Now, if you're like us, those stock price numbers make you say, "damn," but they don't really translate into anything tangible. Thankfully, the Detroit News lays out the effect the drop has had on the Ford family fortune: When Bill Ford Jr. took over the company in 1999, the Ford family's special Class B shares were valued at $2.25 billion. Five months ago, they were worth $586 million. Today, they'd bring less than $189 million. That's a loss of $2.06 billion in less than 10 years; real money, in other words.
[GasBuddy, Google Finance, Detroit News]

Those of you who've been too mesmerized by the collapse of our financial system to notice other news may not realize that Atlanta has been running on empty for about three weeks now, with some drivers reporting hour-long lines for fuel at the few stations with any to sell. Fortunately, social media has come to the rescue: About four days ago, some enterprising Atlanta Twitter users began tagging posts with #atlgas to help their fellow motorists locate fuel.

So why is Atlanta in such dire straits? Apparently the problem began with Hurricane Ike disrupting refining capacity in the Southeast, and the problem was compounded when Governor Sonny Perdue (R-Good Ol' Boy) delayed waiving low-sulfur fuel requirements for the state. However, as a former Atlanta resident, this author is convinced the sheer extent of the Atlanta suburbs, which stretch from Macon to Chattanooga, combined with the fact that no one in Atlanta drives anything smaller than a Tahoe might be adding to the pain. [PansyPatrol]

Up until police decided his operation was illegal and warranted his arrest, Salinas had managed to keep the charge to only 11% of the purchase price on a quarter ounce, and $25 on a $215 bag of coke wasn't going to break anyone's bank. It's just a damn shame our national addiction to oil is now also affecting our national addiction to cocaine. [TheSmokingGun via Gawker]

Jalopnik Snap Judgment: Obviously, gas falling below $4 a gallon is having some effect — unleaded suddenly seems like a bargain, and the short-sighted are likely convinced the energy crisis is over. But we think it's pretty humorous that Lutz is touting the recovery of the truck and SUV market just as GM is in the midst of a huge and well-advertised "employee pricing for everyone" sale. Of course sales are seeing an uptick; that's what incentives do. So, while we're happy for GM that they're able to clear some excess inventory, we're not quite ready to say the truck and SUV sales slide has bottomed out. [Bloomberg]