19p a litre!!!

[wasp11]

19p a litre 'petrol' in development - Yahoo! Cars

[charlie1966]

I hate to burst your bubble because I would love this to happen but you can be sure that one of the oil companies will buy this up and bury the tech. The only people that want this are the end user, ie us and we don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

[wasp11]

Originally Posted by charlie1966

I hate to burst your bubble because I would love this to happen but you can be sure that one of the oil companies will buy this up and bury the tech. The only people that want this are the end user, ie us and we don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I already know that mate, its just a pity we cant stop the greedy ratbag ruining our lives and our planet.

[TheCoder]

Even if they made cars run on water, the Govt would tax it so its more expensive than oil based fuels.

As an aside, the oil companies probably wouldn't be too put out as they effectively make petrol for just a few pence per litre anyway. The vast majority of the cost is tax !

[waqasahmed]

Just bumping this thread, but it may indeed be a possibility in the future. Sure, it may be ridiculously taxed but at least we won't be paying £500 to fill a tank

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...e-of-fuel.html

Fair enough, it's not appealing but neither were the first electric cars. The first electric cars lacked appeal, interior design, hardware etc... but now you have a viable solution for the public, that is relatively affordable(I couldn't afford it, but it is relatively affordable) ie: the Nissan Leaf which can do about 200 miles for £2

[waqasahmed]

^ Also, I think the car industry has only recently been forced to become more efficient particularly from the likes of the USA and the EU, whilst at least we can enjoy the status of computers constantly becoming more and more efficient.

In the computing industry, it makes perfect sense to make more efficient computers as it means that instead of having to run a business that requires a giga watt of power, you can power a business on a couple of thousand watts which means savings naturally. For the home, the focus is on mobile and low power devices ie: Aspire Revo's, netbooks etc.. as lets face it not everyone(myself included) needs a top of the range PC to do relatively basic tasks. These mobile devices typically use about 12-20W(and that's with the screen included!)

With the rise of the internet, the focus has now gone to making our data centres more efficient because at the end of the day businesses are very cost driven.

The car industry is a different matter. Yes, cars have become more efficient, but the manufacturers don't need pay for the fuel of their employees and may not even provide a car for them. Whilst computers are needed for a business, as well as data centres etc... cars are not.

The first computer used about a gigawatt of power; now a PC from the 90's uses about 60W(not counting the monitor) My phone can run Windows 95, on similar hardware that was available at the time and it comes with a touch screen for less than £100, when an equivalent system in 1995 would have cost £1000, without a touch screen and about as fast. The phone uses about 2W of power when the PC would have used about 60W.

This is where the car industry has failed miserably. If Bill Gates be right then we'd be driving in ferrari's by now that could be electric powered, that could achieve 200MPh and that could be a lot cheaper

Originally Posted by Bill Gates

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.

The car industry in terms of efficiency has failed miserably, but really what reason did they have previously? Now, there's a green ethos where consumers are wanting more for their money; mainly because of the rising costs, partly because of our dwindling resources and partly because of the destruction our fossil fuels do to the planet that have locked in carbon for hundreds of thousands of years. We also have initiatives from the USA and the EU to make us more "green" and we in the UK risk a huge fine if we do not comply

Sorry for the ramble, but mainly I think that cars could be a lot more efficient, but companies in the past really have had no need to make really efficient cars that are cheap to drive

[mitford]

Originally Posted by TheCoder

Even if they made cars run on water, the Govt would tax it so its more expensive than oil based fuels.

As an aside, the oil companies probably wouldn't be too put out as they effectively make petrol for just a few pence per litre anyway. The vast majority of the cost is tax !

Indeed they would, i mean heaven forbid that the average person would be allowed to have a few pennies left over at the end of the week

[charlie1966]

Originally Posted by waqasahmed

Sorry for the ramble

But it is such a well written ramble. Which is OK in my book.

[brian]

I thought petrol was already something like 19p a litre, and then £1.15 in duty and VAT?

[waqasahmed]

Originally Posted by brian

I thought petrol was already something like 19p a litre, and then £1.15 in duty and VAT?

Well WTI Crude oil costs $98.85/barrel and Brent Crude oil costs $114.48/barrel according to this site:
http://www.oil-price.net/

Let's say that oil prices are $106.66(averaged out) and there are 158.987 litres/US oil barrel, which makes the cost $0.67/litre or 0.42p (now) It was 19p a while ago. Back about three years ago, Saudi Arabia was selling it for around 20p at the petrol pumps!

http://www.metric-conversions.org/vo...-to-liters.htm

The cost we pay for oil is around £1.40/litre now, so the government takes about 333% from us, so the figure of 19p/litre should come to about 63p once the government takes their money from us

Or if oil costs $114.48/barrel then the true cost is $0.72/litre or 0.45p

I've used a USD to GBP conversion rate of 1.6

I think that seems about right, considering the article mentions that people would pay 60p/litre