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?

Mitsubishi iMiEV Available Next Year

Some good news on the electric vehicle front today from Mitsubishi. Apparently, due to crazy oil prices, lots of successful testing and positive public response, Mitsubishi is pushing the release of its funky jelly bean iMiev forward a year.

Originally the plan was to lease them out to commercial and government fleets during 2009 with a retail launch to the Japanese public in 2010. Now they're saying that Japanese car buyers will be able to grab their own jelly bean by this time next year.

No mention of a US or Australian release. :(

Mister Bitchy and Poo Shoot Working Together on Electric Cars

Autoblog Green reports that Mitsubishi and Peugeot are going to be sharing knowledge and basically being good buddies while producing electric vehicles. As we all know, Mitsubishi already has the iMiev up and running so they've certainly got some know-how. I just wonder what the French will be bringing to the table... escargot?