Regular gasoline just reached $3.29 a gallon range throughout the Upper Midwest today. There are plenty of explanations for this. In some cases, I call them "excuses." We learned our lesson from 2008 when the price of petrol soared to its highest levels in history just before the election of Barack Obama as our President.

Even three years ago, we talked about finding alternatives to standard petroleum products to power our automobiles. Hybrids were starting to gain traction back then with the introduction of the third generation of the Toyota Prius, the latest Honda Insight and the Ford Fusion Hybrid just around the corner. Yet, the automotive industry was feeling the backlash of high fuel prices when they saw market share of trucks, SUVs and crossovers dwindle and the demand for smaller automobiles scaling. Larger vehicles did come back after petrol bottomed out below $2.00 a gallon – yet fuel prices slowly climbed enough for many to climb back into large conveyances again.

The talk also expanded to electric-drive automobiles, such as the Tesla Roadster. While other try to dismiss electric cars, it foresaw a growth now with the Nissan Leaf.

Beyond that were two fuel options: Diesel or Ethanol. Many argue that we would still import the elements to make diesel fuel, despite the fact that diesel engines have an edge on overall maintenance and repair costs than a hybrid. Diesel offers have grown slightly since then, but in larger vehicles rather than smaller ones.

There has been growth on the use of Ethanol fuel, as well as the vehicles offering the option to fuel up with corn juice. To my glee, I’ve found that more than the usual vehicles that had come across my hands were FlexFuel vehicles – and, for most of my fuel-ups, E85 was used to fill up the tank over regular petrol.

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