Fuel Prices Have Dropped. Yay, Let's Buy SUVs!

Here we go again, the price of petrol ("gas" if you don't know the difference between liquids and solids) has dropped back to the price it was a few years ago and people have already forgotten how much money they were forking out only a few short weeks ago to fill their tanks.

Autoblog Green tells us the sad tale of a manufacturer kicking their SUV/Truck manufacturing plants back up a notch in anticipation of increased demand after almost shutting them down over the past year and people who went through a car downsizing are now feeling buyer's remorse.

All price and environmental issues aside, oil is a fossil fuel and therefore a finite resource. Why go burning through something we'll still need in the foreseeable future for the production of plastics and the like when there are alternatives already available. All the people who were bitching and moaning about the price of petrol, imagine if you drove up to the bowser and there was no petrol at all.

Now I'm not a big fan of hybrids as they don't really solve the problem, they just make people who would have driven a medium sized car use the fuel of a small car or a more efficient car. Ultimately you'll still need to stop and fill up with fuel which is a chore and plug in electric cars are still a few years away from being in my garage.

So while I wait for my Holden Volt or Mitsubishi iMiEV I've been trying to drive more efficiently using some basic hypermiling techniques (apparently it's the word of the year for 2008) and tracking my success with Fuel Frog. My last fill up shows I averaged 7.7 litres per 100km, not too shabby, and that's basically from accelerating and braking slowly and coasting when possible.

While I was stoked to pay only $1.19 AUD per litre for my tank of dead dinosaurs I still hate having to stop for petrol. At the weekend we drove to Marysville which has a lot of trees and not much else for half the trip and I was thinking how screwed we'd be if we ran out of fuel out there.

And if that's not enough, now we have ninja kittens driving around on our roads!

While I'm on the topic, take a look at these car ads from the 1970s during the "energy crisis", look familiar?

Cool New "Nanoantenna" Material

I love reading stuff like this. It's super nerdy but has the potential to hugely change the way we do things. This new nanoantenna material developed by the DoE's Idaho National Laboratory grabs heat from anywhere and converts it to electricity. That's right, heat. So you could whack it in your uber crazy gaming rig to help with the cooling and at the same time gain a bonus source of power.

To quote Engadget, "The material, composed of tiny gold antennas set in polyethylene plastic is tuned to gather 80 percent of energy from infrared rays in its production version, and can gather energy from the sun, earth, or even your PC's warmth. The antennas can be tuned to different parts of the infrared spectrum, and the thin material can be sandwiched together to cover the full desired range. Unfortunately, the resulting current generated alternates at rates too high to be converted to DC with current technology -- new manufacturing processes will needed -- but once that problem is solved, nanoantennas should easily best solar cells in efficiency and production costs." Did you like their little "current" pun there?

World Bank Says BioFuels Responsible For 75% Hike In Food Prices

Over at Autoblog Green (which has a nice new design and favicon) they're saying that The Guardian ran a news item stating that The World Bank has come out and said that Biofuels are responsible for a 75% increase in food prices.

The previously mentioned group Food Before Fuel estimated a measly 30% increase and the US government reckons it was only 3%... but they also said they landed on the moon and nothing crashed at Roswell.

I think the worst part of the story is that the report was released in April but was withheld so as not to embarrass George W. Way to go!

Worst Ideas of the 21st Century #10

I can see why someone might think that biofuels have a benefit over fossil fuels in that they are a renewable energy source but enough is enough. I'm pretty sure last time I checked humans need food before the ability to drive a giant car around. AutoblogGreen reports on a group called Food Before Fuel who are protesting the US government's policies on biofuels.

ABG reports that "...these policies are responsible to up to 30 percent of the world's food price inflation." and "...corn is more expensive for food producers and food ends up being more expensive for consumers." So not only are we taking food out of our own mouths but the food we DO get costs more! BRILLIANT!