[roadracer311]

There's a Chevron station on my way home (I live in San Francisco) that has premium for $3.99 It's been that price for a couple weeks.

Most of our cars depreciate at roughly $0.25 per mile. Even at $4 per gallon the cost of fuel is <$0.20 per mile. If you add in tires at about $0.10 per mile (13k miles and $1,300 for PS2's), then depreciation + tires = $0.35 per mile and almost twice the cost of fuel.

To me, an increase of $0.50 for a gallon of fuel seems small compared to the over-all cost of ownership. ($0.50 per gallon is 2.5 cents per mile.) Not counting insurance or tune-ups the total cost per mile is >$0.60 = fuel + depreciation + tires. But then, I ride my motorcycle during the week and only use cars on the weekend, so I don't buy that much fuel.