this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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If its any consolation, Germans would be ecstatic about 5$/gal (equivalent to 1.13€/L), because they're currently paying around twice that.
I have no idea why people keep trying to compare gas between countries. It's such a small part of things.
Heck, I'd pay $10/gal happily for no college tuition costs, national healthcare, and kids not having to do school shooter drills. (Yes yes Germany technically has University fees, but they're like $80 and is more a parking pass than anything)
Also Germany is smaller. Most people aren't driving 60km a day for a work commute. That's a fairly reasonable commute in the US.
Hell I used to commute 130km a day for university. No one would consider that in Germany, but I knew several people from high school making the same commute as me
The size of the country is completely irrelevant. What actually matters is that German metro areas sprawl less than American ones.
Any cities in Germany or the rest of Europe that are similar to San Francisco in size and density? SF seems relatively really decent for transit and walking
I commuted 130km twice for uni in Spain, I took a bus.
That's completely unrelated.
Cheap gas makes longer commutes and wasteful cars more attractive. If it were as expensive as Germany, your average commute would be significantly shorter.
You seem to misunderstand density. In my town in Germany I can walk to anywhere I need to go in 30 minutes, and in 50 I can walk from one end of town to the next. I'll pass dozens of bus stops and 3 train connections.
If I walked that same distance where I grew up in the US I'd be at a gas station, a church, or the woods. None of these offer adequate pay for me to live. I'll pass 0 bus stops, nearest train station would be about 20 miles away still.
This is why Americans freak out about gas prices. There are no other options in many places. Some people will read that and say "just move", but that fails to acknowledge the ongoing housing crisis.
So anyway back to the point on average Americans have to drive further and more frequently just to live. In Germany driving is generally more of a choice, at least in my experience, and due to the general density of cities you don't even have to drive far. Which helps with the gas costs.
Germany being smaller than the US is not the reason then. Germany being more dense is not a coincidence.
The high gas prices solely affect you the average US-American that much because of shitty US domestic policy. That's the sole reason. It's a tragedy of their own making, not some unchangable truth.
You seem to misunderstand their point, without cheap gas the US would have developed differently
America's transit issues is a problem 80 years in the making and covers everything from a post WW2 economic boom to intense lobbying of congress by car manufacturers. Gas is one part of the function, but seems pointless to make up a hypothetical about undoing 80 years of history when we're discussing current events
If you make gas expensive today it doesn't shorten anyone's commute. Maybe it applies pressure to build public infrastructure, but it's going to take decades to restructure the US. In that time the people suffer and have no other option but to endure the cost
In the long run sure, but in the long run we're all dead.
Did you even suggest carpooling with any of those people?
Part of the reason people outside the US would not spend what, 3 hours and 5?, 6? gallons of gas per day is that US petrol is stupid cheap. If it weren't, you and your high school buddies would have rented a place closer to your school. Seriously: 3 guys each paying $8/gallon for 5 gallons/day 4 days/week? $2000/month is rent. At $3/gallon, $250/month to live with your parents makes sense.
I did carpool with a friend often for the first few semesters, however that eventually didn't work out due to different work and school schedules. I often left class and drove straight to work. The days I didn't work I'd stay in the university library till 11pm doing work. I did have some off days of course, but still long days were common.
It also took just under 2 hours as it was mostly a rural stretch of interstate. Which helped a lot with gas efficiency at least. My car was also small and gas efficient so it was about 2.5 gallons per day.
If we round up to 3, that would be about $384 a month at the $8 per gallon price. Which was significantly cheaper than a room in an apartment. Those averaged around $450 to $500, but due to a lack of transit in the city I would still be driving to school. Plus you have to account for semester breaks where I wouldn't be driving at all. Of course gas was ranged from $3 to $3.50 per gallon then.
But then again I knew a guy who did this commute in a pickup truck. He complained about gas daily.
Also many of these people were just people I knew, not friends per se.
Literally been paying almost $7/gallon since the pandemic. America is just now feeling a fraction of European/Scandinavian prices since years back and freaking out. 😅
So happy to have switched to electric a year back. Paying between a dime and a quarter per kWh right now and living my life.
Same - love never being at the gas stations anymore. Paying $0.12/kW.
Very good price for a kWh. 👍
Americans are whining because they've allowed car companies to put out massive trucks that get... 6 kilometers per liter of petrol? And haven't invested in public transit. And have been allowing for the construction of massive datacenters that, despite burning fossil fuels for most of their power, and also still drianing the power grids and making EV charging more expensive (not that any of these people have enough saved to buy an EV anyway). And the complainers are all a minority of "rural" voters who don't live in cities, and can't easily get to a grocery store, a pharmacy, or work without driving 30km there and 30km back. At least.
So yeah, when a daily commute is 10 liters, and most americans who have had a cold in the past 5 years are in medical debt now, going from 50€ per paycheck to 100€ per paycheck every 2 weeks on petrol spend is hefty, especially given how the US federal minimum wage is a little over 6€/hour, and that's if the person still has a job at all, given the layoffs all over the place. Even if people are making 10€/hour on their commute job, gas price increases have just eatten an additional 5 hours of their labor every 2 weeks. If they go up any more, the Iran War's ramifications will approach a 10% pay cut for the "average" American. (And this doean't even account for the tax money being spent on the war, nor on whatever the outcome of the US debt exceeding its GDP will be, probably for the next generation).
Would those Americans have been better off buying fuel efficient cars, finding remote work to not have to drive so much, living closer to cities to benefit from public transit? Probably. But it's a lot late to try to make those shifts for these people.
When american politics claims that no one has been listening to "middle America," this is who they mean: the voters who are gullible enough to be oversold on "American Dream" and end up living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net.
The problem is that there is no helping them, so no one really tries. And the far right loves this, because it's easy to give those people false hope, underdeliver, and then blame it on the left.
So alas, no, it isn't any consolation that other countries are feeling this pain--that makes the situation feel more hopeless, rather than less.
I drive a fuel efficient car, have tried living in the city (extremely nice but unfortunately more expensive not less) would kill for public transit. Instead I live an hour away and pay 60% income for rent and 35% for car, I don't think I'm alone. One time I knew one neighbor, this is somewhat strange in America, if I want to go somewhere I either have to pay or maybe just walk around the same store I've done hundreds of times, I could go for a walk around a park but I would have to drive there, chances of getting harassed simply walking around are around 50% and that skyrockets to around 80% if you're doing it anywhere you're not "supposed to" like say your own neighborhood.
In czech we have 50% of german salary, and our gas is 1.77€/l :)
Probably drive a quarter or less though right?
Statesian here. I'd gladly pay double a gallon for gas to have a German public transit system. They're right, we're comparing apples and Daves when we compare between countries.