More People on the Road... to Recovery?

I noticed the data today for gasoline inventories indicate that Americans are driving more than the previous month, after 12 months of declines. When folks drive more, the velocity of not only their body increases, but the velocity of money increases as well. When money velocity goes up, more people are actively buying and selling so the economic engine maybe getting a little more juice.

Around here people are driving to the beach more often with a surfboard and a picnic lunch, in order to save some money. The more miles that are driven, the more vehicles need to be fixed. Also, once people show up at the beach they many find themselves out of surfwax or want to rent a beach cruiser to go on the bike path. So, even if the intention originally was to have a cheap day at the beach and not spend a dime on anything other than gasoline, ancillary spending will almost always happen when people are on the move.

This gasoline data was one of the less obvious factors in the stock market gaining over 600 points this week to date. The Bear Market for now (this week at least) is in submission.

Long term I know combustion motors and gasoline will go the way of the the Rolodex and newspapers. It is simpler and cheaper to travel on electricity, so over time even more folks will head to the beach, and drop into Aunt Donna's along the way.

As I've said in the past, the main obstacle to electric cars is an inexpensive, powerful and fast charging battery. Well, it turns out some scientists at MIT have broken the code on how to charge batteries in a heartbeat. Check out this Auto Week article.


Could it be both the economy and the environment will benefit?