Thanksgiving Gas Prices at Three-Year Low Just When Drivers Are Out in Force

• AAA says the national average gas price is $3.29, but the «most common» price, is actually closer to $2.95, according to President Biden’s energy advisor, Amos Hochstein.
• AAA said it expects 55.4 million people to travel for the holiday weekend, the third-highest number in any year since 2000.
• We’ll still be checking in on gas prices on Thanksgivings to come, but advisor Hochstein said the pieces are being put into place to make “the electric vehicle experience in America be the best in the world,” so the more stable cost of electricity will take some of the fluctuations out of holiday travel.

Thanksgiving travelers have more choices than ever for how to get to their holiday destinations this year. For drivers of vehicles with old-school gas engines, the good news is that lower gas prices make this the Thanksgiving with the lowest gas prices since the first COVID-19 holiday three years ago. Lower energy costs across the board should make for even better news for electric vehicle drivers hitting the road in future weekends.

On Tuesday, the national average gas price in the U.S. was $3.29, according to AAA. The driver advocacy organization said this number has been dropping for the past two months, one reason why we might see more cars on the road this weekend than in previous years. AAA said it expects 55.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles this Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with 88.7 percent (49.1 million) doing so in a car. The forecast is an increase of 2.3 percent compared to last year and represents the third-highest Thanksgiving travel forecast since AAA began tracking holiday travel in 2000. Both 2005 and 2019 saw higher forecasts.

More people traveling for the holiday this year makes sense to Amos Hochstein, senior advisor to President Biden for energy, who told Car and Driver that Biden Administration efforts regarding the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, using some of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and other actions helped bring gas prices down.

«What President Biden has wanted to do all along is to bring prices to consumers down, to lower inflation, and what we’re seeing this Thanksgiving,» he told C/D.«We are at the low end of the year as