[geeks] electric cars

[Mike Meredith]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:34:50 -0500 (CDT), Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Gasoline is cheaper than Coca Cola - $2/gallon for Gas around here
> (central NJ), $2.58 for Coca Cola ($1.29 for a 2 liter bottle, 4

Petrol prices in the UK are nearer 0.87 (# per litre) x 4.55
(litre->gallon conversion) x 1.87 (#->$) ... $7.14/gallon. It's amusing
to hear about US residents complaining about high fuel prices :)

Petrol is amazingly cheap (after removing taxes) but it competes
'unfairly' with other fuels because there is no cost of production ...
just the cost of retrieval (oil is after all not produced by oil
companies but by natural processes that turn rotting vegetation to oil
over geological time periods).

It also doesn't factor in the cost of dealing with the by products of
burning all that oil ... not just the CO2, but other pollutants that
contribute to asthma and other respiratory problems.

It might be worth distorting the market by slowly raising petrol prices
to encourage the use of bio-fuels.

As an aside to another message ... the amount of agricultural land in
the US has dropped by roughly 405,000 square miles since 1950 (21%).
Finding 250,000 square miles for bio-fuels doesn't seem impossible.

--
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 Power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
 -- Vint Cerf