"Try telling Montana families they have to buy an electric vehicle just to afford getting around town." That's how Montana's Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) responded to Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who suggested that folks having troubles with the high gas prices should just buy electric cars.

Isn't that rich? The guy who couldn't fill potholes as a mayor in Indiana is now in charge of the Transportation Department in the midst of a huge supply chain crisis in America.

Leave it to some elitist in Washington, DC to tell working class folks to buy a very expensive electric car if they can't handle the high gas prices at the pump.

Here's the quote, according to the Washington Examiner:

"Families that once they own that electric vehicle will never have to worry about gas prices again," he added. Buttigieg said that rural drivers, who regularly drive long distances, stand to benefit most from electric vehicles.

This is, of course, absurd in one aspect in particular. Many rural residents work in agriculture. They're hauling cattle. They're hauling hay. And they're hauling heavy equipment. They need power and reliability- the very power that most electric vehicles can't provide.

Former Montana Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) was known for his one liners. "You can't haul a heifer with a Geo Metro," he used to say.

According to the New York Post, electric vehicles are considerably more expensive for consumers:

According to Kelly Blue Book, the average price of a new electric vehicle as of October of this year was $55,676. By contrast, the average price of a new compact car was $25,240 — less than half that amount. The average price of a new compact SUV was $34,122, while the electric vehicle price was even higher than that of the average new sports car ($44,981).

“Everyone can probably afford electric cars in the world that Pete Buttigieg lives in,” tweeted Trump White House communications official Mercedes Schlapp.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

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