Car Coach Says “Gas Companies Are Lying About Price Increases”

Automotive expert Lauren Fix says Americans have been trained to accept a familiar pattern at the gas pump: prices rise quickly when crude oil, global conflict, hurricanes, refinery trouble, or pipeline problems dominate the headlines, but they fall much more slowly once those pressures ease.

In a new episode of Car Coach Reports, Fix argued that the old explanations for fuel price swings no longer feel complete in an era when artificial intelligence and pricing algorithms can monitor competitors, demand, traffic, wholesale costs, and local conditions almost instantly.

Fix said she began looking into the issue after noticing what many drivers have complained about for years. When oil prices rise, gas prices seem to follow almost immediately, but when oil prices drop, consumers are told to wait while inventories, contracts, and supply chains catch up.

“Apparently, gasoline arrives by SpaceX rocket when crude oil prices increase and Pony Express when crude oil falls,” Fix said.

Her larger point was not that every price increase is fake or that energy markets are simple. Instead, she argued that drivers deserve more transparency about how pump prices are being set now that software is playing a bigger role in decisions that used to look more like direct competition between stations.

The Old “Rockets And Feathers” Problem

Fix said economists have long studied the pattern of fuel prices rising fast and falling slowly, a behavior often called “rockets and feathers.”

Under that explanation, prices shoot up like rockets when costs increase, then drift downward like feathers when costs decline. Economists often point to inventory costs, replacement costs, consumer behavior, and local competition as reasons for that lag.

Fix acknowledged that those factors may explain part of the story, but she questioned whether older studies fully account for the modern fuel-pricing environment.

“Most of these studies were written long before artificial intelligence started making pricing recommendations,” Fix said.

That is where her argument becomes more current. She said today’s market is different because companies now have software that can monitor competitors around the clock, process large amounts of data in seconds, and recommend prices based on far more than the cost of crude oil.

The question, in Fix’s view, is whether consumers are still watching true competition or whether they are watching algorithmic optimization that tends to protect company margins.

That distinction matters because gasoline is not an optional luxury for most households. People may delay buying a television or skip a vacation when prices rise, but they still have to drive to work, take children to school, deliver goods, and operate emergency vehicles, farm equipment, and service trucks.

Fix Says One Software Company Kept Appearing

Fix said the story changed when she began reviewing court filings, government documents, and company statements to understand why fuel prices across the country often seem to move together.

She said one name kept appearing: Kalibrate.

According to Fix, Kalibrate openly markets pricing technology used by many large fuel retailers. She said the company’s own materials describe software that can analyze competitor prices, wholesale costs, traffic, demand, local conditions, and many other variables before recommending what it calls an “optimal” price.

That word stood out to her.

“Not competitive, not consumer-friendly, optimal,” Fix said.

She stressed that using pricing software is not illegal, using artificial intelligence is not illegal, and making a profit is not illegal. Her concern begins where pricing technology may stop simply helping a station react to the market and instead starts shaping the market in ways consumers cannot see.

This is the heart of the issue for drivers. A station owner checking the price across the street and choosing to beat it by a few cents is easy to understand, but a pricing platform recommending the most profitable number across thousands of locations is harder for the average customer to evaluate.

The technology may be legal and efficient, but efficiency for the seller is not always the same thing as savings for the buyer.

A California Lawsuit Raised Bigger Questions

Fix then turned to an ongoing lawsuit in California that, according to her report, was filed June 22 in the Eastern District of California.

She said the lawsuit accuses several major gas station operators of manipulating pump prices by using AI-driven pricing software from Kalibrate Fuel Systems. Fix said the complaint targets more than 1,700 gas stations in California, including operators connected to brands such as BP, Walmart, Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Albertsons, and Circle K.

According to Fix’s summary of the lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that where the software was widely used, prices rose about 30 cents per gallon above what normal competition would have produced.

Fix was careful to say those allegations have not been proven.

“Courts exist for a reason,” she said. “Facts, evidence, and due process matters.”

That caution is important because a lawsuit is not a verdict. The companies accused in a complaint still have the right to respond, challenge the claims, and argue that their pricing practices are lawful.

Still, Fix said the lawsuit raises a question that is larger than one case in one state: if many competitors rely on similar software, similar data, and similar pricing logic, are they still competing the way consumers assume they are?

Algorithms And The Meaning Of Competition

Fix said the traditional picture of gas station competition is simple. One station charges $3.49, the competitor across the street drops to $3.46, and consumers reward the lower price.

“That’s capitalism. That’s competition,” Fix said.

But she asked what happens if the station owner is no longer making that decision in a direct, human way, and instead a computer is analyzing thousands of data points before recommending the price that produces the highest return.

Fix said the concern becomes larger when that process is multiplied across many companies and many locations.

She did not claim that algorithms automatically create illegal collusion. Her argument was more cautious but still pointed: competition may start to look different when software is guiding pricing decisions across an industry.

That is a serious issue because competition depends on independent decision-making. When businesses compete, one may cut prices, another may offer better service, and customers benefit from the pressure. If automated systems push many sellers toward similar conclusions, even without a traditional backroom agreement, consumers may feel the result at the pump.

Fix described it as a possible shift from markets driven by human competition to markets guided by automated optimization.

Federal Pressure Adds To The Story

Fix said another piece of the puzzle appeared when President Trump publicly criticized gasoline retailers for not passing lower oil prices on to drivers.

She also said the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission encouraged state attorneys general to investigate possible antitrust violations, unlawful coordination, and consumer-protection issues in petroleum markets.

Fix said those actions do not prove wrongdoing, but they do show that competition enforcers are asking whether something in the market deserves closer attention.

“Investigations aren’t convictions,” she said. “But it tells me something else. The people responsible for enforcing competition are asking whether competition itself is changing.”

That is a useful way to frame the issue. The story is not simply about whether one gas station is charging too much on a given corner; it is about whether the pricing systems behind many stations are becoming powerful enough to affect what competition looks like across wider markets.

Fix also pointed out that even small price differences can become enormous at scale. Five cents per gallon may not be enough to make most drivers cross town, but multiplied by billions of gallons sold each year, small increases can turn into billions of dollars.

Gasoline May Be Only The Beginning

Fix argued that gasoline caught her attention because drivers see fuel prices every day on large signs and tend to remember what they paid last week.

But she said the same broader pricing issue now appears in other parts of daily life, including hotels, airlines, ride-sharing, online shopping, insurance, vacation rentals, and apartment rentals.

“The names are different. The software is different. But the philosophy sounds remarkably familiar,” Fix said.

That philosophy, as she described it, is to collect large amounts of data, analyze consumer behavior, watch competitors, and determine the price people are most likely willing to pay.

Fix said the technology itself is not automatically good or bad. The real question is who the tool serves.

That is a fair concern in an economy where consumers often do not know why the price they see changed from one hour to the next, or why two people searching for similar services might see different prices. Dynamic pricing can make markets more responsive, but it can also make them feel less transparent and less negotiable.

For drivers, the pump is simply the most visible example because gasoline prices are public, frequent, and unavoidable.

Fix Urges Consumers To Pay Attention

Fix ended by challenging viewers not to simply fill up and drive away.

She urged consumers to watch nearby gas stations over several days and ask whether prices appear to move through competition or through synchronized optimization. She also encouraged people to look beyond gasoline and observe airline tickets, hotel searches, insurance quotes, ride-sharing fares, and online prices.

“Am I watching competition or am I watching optimization?” Fix asked.

She said she does not claim to have all the answers and acknowledged that the California lawsuit may go nowhere, regulators may find no violations, and courts may determine the pricing practices are legal.

But Fix said consumers should still ask questions because algorithms are influencing more decisions than ever before, including what people watch, read, buy, and increasingly what they pay.

Her argument is ultimately about transparency. If energy markets are complicated, consumers can accept that, but complexity should not become a reason to stop asking why prices rise faster than they fall or why competitors appear to move together.

Gasoline may have started the discussion because every driver notices the numbers on the sign, but Fix said the larger issue is the quiet spread of automated pricing across the economy.

For now, her warning is less about proving a final conclusion and more about questioning a system that has become harder for ordinary customers to see. If software is helping set the prices Americans pay every day, Fix’s view is that drivers should know whether they are benefiting from competition or simply being measured by algorithms designed to find the most they will tolerate.