Fuel costs where you live

1200ts said:
The big advantage of petroleum is mother nature has had millions of years to do most of the work making it. And we humans don't have to do much work to make in in to gasoline.
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Right. it comes out of the ground right under our cars and fills itself into our tanks... Oh - no, that's wrong... Instead...:

 
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Chalkie said:
Gents,
I'm not claiming to be an expert here but the mob I work for are heavily involved with the UK firms that make the machines that make the solar panels, mainly manufactured in China.

To put this customers spend in perspective it's circa £10M when the average customer is probably £25k.

The clever boys at our customer know plenty about solar or photovoltaic cells are they are correctly called.

All up they are extremely expensive to produce, not particularly efficient and ain't as reliable long term as people say.

Yes, you can buy it and it will pay for itself in 5 or so years but.......
It probably took more energy to mine the raw materials, build it, ship it etc than it will ever produce.

So basically it let's us feel good about being energy efficient whilst hugh resources are used to manufacture it and politicians can blah blah about what they are doing for the environment, whilst several manufacturers get bloody rich selling snake oil.

Happy to be proved wrong but has anyone seen any data on the real cost to manufacture these things?????

Cheers,
Andy
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Hi Andy, maybe the following film will help:

 
"The big advantage of petroleum is mother nature has had millions of years to do most of the work making it. And we humans don't have to do much work to make in in to gasoline."


Our society is mainly solar powered in some way.
Hydrocarbons are from millions of years of plant life photosynthesis.
So we get to burn millions of years of solar energy from the earth's past and churn out CO2, methane, sulphur etc. in a very short period into today's atmosphere and expect no changes to our environment.
 
Yesterday I put £85.73/154.83$AU/112.28$US in my Triple.
49.28L/10.84 Imp Gall/13.02 US Gall.
When I bought it, back in '76, a full tank cost £1.46 for 4.2 Imp Gallons.
£85.73 would have given me 8,221 miles, back then, and taken me two weeks and seven hours to earn that much.7A2BA132-C898-42FB-9458-DE32C4EF2AB4.jpeg
 
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Lothar,

Thanks for the video but given how much he thanked and promoted the Web provider, I doubt his total independence.

I know he quoted lots of reports and stats but........

I accept this was a UK thing but circa 20 years back there was lots of "evidence" submitted and pushed on us by all sorts of reliable and independent (or interested and benefiting from?) organisation telling us of the huge benefits from switching from petrol to diesel. And now we all changed, now we find we are killing the planet, etc etc. Even more surprising you get taxed even more for the "crime" of driving a dirty, polluting diesel.

I just wonder if some of these same independent organisation are producing this new reports.

Call me a cynical old git (it's true) but I bet in 20 years time there will be new opportunity, product, solution and we all need to pay more tax to fund it.

Don't know if you have Smart Meters but that's also a big con to save the environment.

PS not against saving the planet just don't trust any government in a 4/5 year term to do anything long term, when they can flog any crap short term to look good.

Cheers,
 
1200ts said:
The big advantage of petroleum is mother nature has had millions of years to do most of the work making it. And we humans don't have to do much work to make in in to gasoline.
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Bruce, thanks for sharing your expertise re Hydrogen fuel, I really had no idea and I thought it was a good source of clean energy, boy was I wrong. 20 years ago the US was proposing switching vehicles and all homes to CNG, the infrastructure for CNG fueling stations for vehicles never took off to much opposition from 'big oil'. CNG for new home developments was going gangbusters it was everywhere, now in 2022, there are several states ie Washington where new homeowners cannot hook up to CNG. Plus in several USl states if you have CNG in your home, heating, furnaces, ovens, water heaters you have to remove them and go all-electric before you can sell your house.
Petroleum is mother nature's most cost-effective source of fuel perhaps where we need to focus our most brilliant and innovative minds is finding a cost-effective way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
 
I read an article about Tiggy Forests big Hydrogen move, the plant is apparently to be built near a huge solar farm in outback Queensland as using solar is the key to making it financially viable, the biggest downside is its extremely difficult to transport Hydregent, something about the difficulty of it being held is pressure vessels and leaching through. It's far from an easy swop from Petrol.
 
Green hydrogen - the only way to make it. Solar/wind is the key. I think it needs to be transported as ammonia - yes, there will be problems that need solving. The smart people will have to knock their heads together and solve them. If we just say it's too difficult and let's stick with fossils, we're not trying hard enough.
 
78jotadave said:
Petroleum is mother nature's most cost-effective source of fuel perhaps where we need to focus our most brilliant and innovative minds is finding a cost-effective way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
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I think the best approach is to not put the excess CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place. Then you don't have to expend extra effort and energy removing it.

Although I love my hydrocarbon powered vehicles I suffer some guilt in using them. Oh well.

cheers,

bazzee
 
to fill my car I need 45liters, and I spent 83€ (it wasn't empty, gasoline at 2,10€/l)
I will travel for 1200Km, hope for that day the prices will be better.
 
Yesterday my 2013 Prius PHV calculated an average 29.8km/l on a 120km journey of mixed country roads and city freeway.
My 1996 petrol Toyota Prado 3.4l typically averages 7km/l for the same journey (much worse in city driving).
Petrol stations along the route advertised between AU$2.11 and 2.18 per litre, (around 1.43 Euro).
 
G'day Basketcase.
I've been considering a hybrid to replace the Wifes Ford pos, but she is not convinced.
How do you find the Prius, or would you prefer another make / model of hybrid.
cheers.
 
Ian D said:
G'day Basketcase.
I've been considering a hybrid to replace the Wifes Ford pos, but she is not convinced.
How do you find the Prius, or would you prefer another make / model of hybrid.
cheers.
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It all depends upon pattern of use and how much you want to spend.

The Prius is older conventional technology but well proven. The battery is small and is only for braking regeneration and then uses the electric motor to assist the car pulling from the lights.

The Prius plug-in hybrid (PHV) has a modest size battery (bigger than a conventional hybrid) and can be used for shorter distance commutes etc. as an EV up to 20km while automatically dropping into conventional hybrid mode for longer distance. This does involve plugging in to charge the battery but uses a domestic 10A connection for a few hours. All my city commuting is in EV mode. The PHV is only available in Australia as a Japanese import as Toyota has always refused to sell it here. This brings up the issue of who will service it.
The prius is the same overall size as my wife's 2001 Corolla, however the prius has more leg room and head height for my 6'3" son.
My only complaint about the prius is slow acceleration which means cheeky commuters cut in front of you.

Sounds like a conventional hybrid may be more suitable for your wife to drive. There are plenty of later model hybrids sold in Australia with more performance, both Toyota and others. However, my neighbour has a Mitsubishi Outlander SUV plug-in hybrid for his wife and he charges it only a couple of evenings a week for a few hours as it has 87km electric range and a more powerful motor.

See: https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-advice/phev-on-sale-in-australia
 
It’s Cosi’s Chinese van,
They love their Chinese cars up in Queensland 🙄
I just look the other way
……….
😷😷😷
 
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