Petrol

[boon racoon]

To be very honest Matt , if everyone was super effecient with what they had already it would be a better start.

if u understand???

Of course.

The fact is people won't do it unless it's convenient or cheaper for them. Sadly the alternatives to driving a car just aren't.

[Mark W]

There was that big issue before where it was revealed companies could've banged out cars with alternative fuel sources ages ago, but they knew no-one would buy them at that point so they didn't bother finalising them. It's a bit of a short-term way of looking at things, but you can see why they're just drip-feeding the market with cars and engines that are gradually working their way towards creating a more sustainable method of transport.

[hI-OOPS-CAPS]

this might be the one i read of in the metro newspaper.

apparently people doing the strike gone as far as saying they dont care if they lose their licences, get a ban or even as far as a jail sentence if i can recall

[James]

Good god, when will they learn protesting about petrol solves NOTHING.

[Brian Bleech]

But Ash some states in america pay like 30c for a litre and we have to pay 1.10 thats whats not right, it's not the oil companies fault it's the governments .

They have to pay for there healthcare, it balances out...

[Mooore!]

It costs something like £1.10 for unleaded here on the IoM & £1.19 for superunleaded but i can't really say the price of petrol bothers me at all.

As long as it's decent quality & there's enough in the pump to fill my tank then i'm happy.

[craigjames]

the thing is, until the government finally realise that the public transport system is so bad, that the majority of people cant use it, hoiking up fuel prices and car tax, congestion charges etc to make people seek alternative forms of transport wont work. theyre just raising the prices because we know we need the fuel and not giving us an alternative. until they sort that out, people will by petrol and deisel whatever the price.

[El Cristoff]

isn't hydrogen incredibly reactive?

Yeah, but so is petrol.

I'm confused on how a hydrogen fuel cell would work, is the hydrogen in a liquid or gaseous state? I mean, it works in kind of the same way as nuclear fission (i think, but i feel i need correcting) as in spliting the atoms to split other atoms, but whats to stop it after the engine is switched off?

A highly confused Chris

[Token]

Good god, when will they learn protesting about petrol solves NOTHING.

Don't you remember the last protest? I remember prices dropping from approx 80p to 65p. Protesting does solve problems, especially when it starts to cost the economy 10s of millions each day.

Yeah, but so is petrol.

I'm confused on how a hydrogen fuel cell would work, is the hydrogen in a liquid or gaseous state? I mean, it works in kind of the same way as nuclear fission (i think, but i feel i need correcting) as in spliting the atoms to split other atoms, but whats to stop it after the engine is switched off?

A highly confused Chris

If you wanted to stop a nuclear fission going past critical stage then you'd use cadmium rods to absorb the neutrons but you'd only using nuclear fission with elements like plutonium and uranium. Hydrogen as a fuel would be used to produce electricity an run a motor like a normal engine. There is another engine that I can't think off the top of my head that uses two pistons, one super hot and the other super cold, as hydrogen passes through the hot one it expands and then it passes through the cold one it contracts forcing the pistons up and down. Dinner time...

[fathopper]

Is there any way to clone petrol? hmmmm? Or just a silly idea?

[Bionic Balls]

errrr guys....nuclear fission is not going on in a fuel cell...

for a start you need a big atom that will form two new stable atoms, and if you hadn't noticed, H is the simplest atom there is meaning there is nothing to split...!

fuel cells are just combustion chambers like an engine, but instead of burning the fuel, they use a catalyst to make the reaction occur at a lower temperature....

think that's the easiest way to explain it...and the reaction produces electrons..which run through the motor circuit and power your vehicular menace.

[JonMack]

how can you guys bitch about a quid a litre of petrol thats had to be drilled for, drained, shipped, purified and transported to petrol pumps. some bottles of water costs more.

Because tax on petrol is something stupid like 80%

[Gavyn.]

making hydrogen is also a problem....!

how? it's way easier to make than petrol and you need nothing more than water. I used to have this small arrangement that I aquired from school which made hydrogen, it was ace could fill a bottle with hydrogen or a balloon attach it to a small fuse and get a fairly large explosion.

We built a hydrogen powered car for a long distance race with Sigen and played with tonnes of models which were pretty cool. it's definatly the way forward.

paying for medical care doesn't really balance it out, most people over there have medical insurance which doesn't cost all that much, even here I still have to pay for dental insurance because there are way to many patients for the nhs dentist.

[Si-man]

Talking of unleaded and super unleaded, what is the actual difference??

Been tempted to put it in the bike, but dont want to f**k it up.

[Token]

If you were to pay 95.1 pence for a litre of petrol, 63.7 pence of that would be Tax. Meaning petrol would only cost 31.4 pence a litre if there were no tax. I'm not saying that's a good idea, you need tax to run the country, but you certainly don't need the tax to be 60.5% thats daylight robbery. I really want a strike, and I want the government an the economy to become crippled. Not only will it bring prices to acceptable levels, it might bump start people into using public transport an saving the world.

Edited December 12, 2007 by Scopse

[Simon]

What pisses me off, is that from tax on fuel they earn like 3 billion a year? The idea of petrol tax is to maintain the roads. Like f**k are they doing that, someone worked it out and only like 30% of the tax is put back into the roads, the rest is put into other random bollocks.

Ash, hard to explain, but lets say the brake pads for your bike went up about 2000% everytime you bought a pair, because of the time pads last and so on it kind of relates, that's basically what drivers get.

It also means frieght lorry's now cost around 420 quid a day to run. If you put the prices up, you lose business, simple as that.

Fuel is a joke in this country, compare it to most other countrie's and it's almost 30% more expensive. Not to mention the quality is far, far worse. In japan you find less then 99ron at the pumps, over here you'll be lucky to find 99ron at pumps. (for japanese cars or higher powered cars, thats also the different normal and super Si, one is more reactive, but you only really see the benifits if the engine has been mapped for that ron of fuel)

[Token]

Talking of unleaded and super unleaded, what is the actual difference??

Been tempted to put it in the bike, but dont want to f**k it up.

It won't f**k it up, it just gives a slightly bigger bang that you'll only notice in more powerful in engines, you'd be wasting your money putting it into a small motorbike.

Fifth gear did a test on optimax, bp ultimate and supermarket fuel on three cars:

- a 81bhp clio,

- a 172bhp golf gti

- a subaru impreza with 235bhp.

They connected each up to a power/tourqe machine a did six runs for power increase only, each time resetting the ecu. The results

Clio- supermarket 81

BPU 81

Optimax 81

Golf-supermarket 172

BPU 174

Optimax 177

Impreza-supermarket 235

BPU 247

Optimax 249

You can see pretty blatantly that there's no benefit running it in an under powered car. Let alone a motorbike thats engine is 10x smaller than a cars.

[Nick Garland]

I think we should all run cars on methane, I mean if you drive socially the amount of methane you produce whilst farting in a week would probaboly be fine to run a car

Nah petrol is a bit expensive at the moment, over the christmas period I am riding my trials bike about 3 miles to and from work just to save money on petrol, and due to our small sized car park were not allowed to park there over christmas. I think the price should come down, I dont want to be on to moan but the government wastes so much money on shit its unreal.

Wellfare/benefits need to be cut, the UK is too generous, if people are disabled, yeah give them some support, if people are just being plain lazy then screw them (ovbiously with a few more rules here and there). If they didnt spend so much on useless tasks as well such as re-surfacing roads and "road enhancements", we had parts of our roads painted red because they had some spare cash to spend. Cut back on all this they dont need to tax as much. Also car taxing, should pay more tax the further you drive, the more your car pollutes etc, so if you drive say 50,000 miles a year with a 5l engine you should pay a hell of a lot more tax than someone who drives 5,000 miles on a 2l engine.

So many problems with the government at the moment its unreal. Also does anyone remember a few years back when Gordon Brown had a large black hole were about £7billion dissapeared (I think) and also releasing so much money on the pensions.

*rant over*

I am all for the petrol strike.