I don't think it will ever reach that. No one will pay it, therefore they would have to lower their prices.
But mark my words, vehicles are not a want anymore, nowadays they are a NEED. Something bad is going to happen in our near future, I feel it.
The nature of the globally decreasing oil supply will inevitably push the cost of fuel to $7.00 per gallon and much higher, surely within my lifetime. This is simply because the demand will continue to increase as the remainder of the word becomes more and more industrialized, yet the supply of recoverable oil will continue to become harder to obtain.
Simply put, petroleum is a finite resource that is dwindling and is eventually going to dissappear. I remember in a energy and the environment class I took that estimates for the global peak oil production (Hubbert's peak, which also predicted 1970's oil crisis based on United States peak oil production) all were projected to take place right about at this decade.
I agree that something bad is going to happen, and likely has slowly started. The United States has become what it is with an economy based on the use of cheap energy. The increasing cost of fuel, which is an essential cost for the overwhelming majority of Americans, has cut in to household's disposable income, resulting in a weakened overall economy as money has been channeled from other markets to be quite literally burned for transportation.
I think we are at the beginning of a slippery slope which is only going to get steeper until the exhaustive cost of fuel will force the market to engineer and implement alternative fuel sources to replace petroleum. During this transition period, the economy of the United States that is so dependant on relatively cheap energy is going to suffer, and it's a shame that we did not begin to implement change sooner to ease us off our oil dependency, but unfortunately it appears that we as Americans are going to have to learn the hard way. It's going to suck.
And back on topic for the thread, to date I have spent $5,415.00 spread out over about eight years for modifications for my vehicle. That does not include maintenece costs or fuel costs, simply modification costs.
