Jay Honeck wrote:

So, to summarize: Yes, there is fewer GA in Europe. But even if you would
wipe all avgas taxes, there wouldn't be more.

You admit that predatory taxation has added 25% to the cost of GA in France
(which is a gross under-estimation, BTW) -- and in the same breath say that
it has NO impact on it?

That is the most absurd assertion I've seen in Usenet -- and I've seen some
whoppers over the years.

Well let's go back to the premise of the post, that avgas costs $7.50 a gallon
in France. Avgas in France would be priced in Euros, so somebody's converting
Euros to US dollars using the current conversion rate. That's mathematically
accurate, but doesn't tell the whole story. The dollar is very weak to the
euro right now, which affects Americans buying European goods and Europeans
buying American goods, but doesn't affect Europeans buying domestic products as
much. For example, if the price of the dollar versus euros fell tomorrow to
1/2 of what it is today, it would appear that avgas would cost USD 15.00 a
gallon. This would appear to American to be much more expensive, but would not
really change what avgas would cost to a French(wo)man in France.

European countries tend to tax consumption higher, the US doesn't. One reason
avgas is kept expensive is because autogas is very expensive to encourage
public transit and excellent high speed rail service. If avgas would be priced
lower then autogas, there would be an incentive to burn avgas on the road
(which wouldn't do cat converter much good.) Note that Jet-A is much cheaper
in Europe. This is another reason driving the diesel piston aviation engine
and several European companies are leading this technology.

Aviation gasoline will continue to get more expensive in the US, and eventually
may not be available at any price. It can be found (in the US as of last
week) selling at $4.82/US Gallon so you can say that the US is working hard to
catch up with France, and that's without all of those European taxes as well.
Avgas is a boutique fuel that must be specially handled and is produced in
very limited quantities compared to other products, with a lot of liability for
the slightest mishap. More and more corporate and other high consumption
aviation gas consumption has been shifted to aircraft that burn Jet A, further
decreasing the economies of scale for 100ll. Also very importantly, it
contains a *lot* of tetraethyl lead (despite that LL designation), and leaded
autogas was eventually banned by 1996 in the US for a good reason.

Surprisingly essence avec plomb (super) is still available in France, although
it does cost more then sans plomb so it isn't purchased nearly as much. .