MetaFilter posts tagged with gasoline

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:26:58 -0800

Fuelly tracks your gas mileage over time, helping you save fuel and expenses as you drive.

Convert Your Car to Run On Water

jonson — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:18:51 -0800

Do You Want To Know RIGHT NOW How You Can Drive Around Using WATER as FUEL and Laugh At Rising Gas Costs, While Reducing Emissions and Preventing Global Warming?

Biofuels worsen global warming

salvia — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:50:30 -0800

Biofuels worsen global warming, according to two studies published in Science last week. Current US biofuel policies would double carbon emissions over the gasoline alternative. More details: ScienceExpress fulltext pdf of study #1, powerpoint summary of study #1, abstract of study #2, summary of both, policy recommendations pdf (via: 1, 2). Here's some context I needed to understand the US study: annually, the US produces ~5 billion gallons of ethanol and uses ~140 billion gallons of gasoline = 145 billion gallons total (sour ces). US law now calls for 36 billion gallons of biofuel production by 2022. The projections are based on increasing biofuel production to 31 billion gallons by 2015 (or the equivalent of the entire US grain crop from 2004).

Lee press-on car

XMLicious — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:16:25 -0800

The Tata Nano (pic) is a car that costs less new than the amount I've spent on gas during single car trips, recently announced to the auto market in India. The Chery QQ ^, successful , wide ly ex por ted, and recognized as the Hostage Taker's Vehicle of Choice by China Car Times, is the runner-up for the world's cheapest car but is still approximately twice as expensive. Yes indeed, the price of gas is not going to come back down. So much for my coast-to-coast road trips. Forbes magazine's The World's Cheapest Cars (javascript slideshow)

Pain is Relative

DarlingBri — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:35:21 -0800

As crude hit an all time high at $96.40US per barrel this week, prices increase at pumps across the US. Regular self-serve rose 9 cents to an average of $2.80 per gallon in 11 Texas cities this week, a price of €0.51 per litre. Even Arab nations are feeling the pinch; in Syria, subsidised fuel prices were increased by 20% to €0.74 per litre. This price is "still low compared to world prices", though. The Automobile Association has a handy reference chart for Europe: drivers in the UK are paying an average of €1.37, and Danes €1.40. Latvia, though, is a European bargain at just €1.00 per litre.

Adding up US subsidies for auto travel with and without the costs of war

salvia — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:02:34 -0800

In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask? Largely tucked away in footnotes and background papers [pdf] are his careful considerations about which expenditures to include and what portion of costs relate directly to automobile oil use, for everything from the highway patrol, to fighting brushfires, to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to military activity in the Middle East. Don't miss Report #15, in which Delucchi and coauthor James Murphy seek to calculate: “If the U.S. transportation sector did not use oil, how much would the U.S. federal government reduce its military commitment in the Persian Gulf?” [pdf] (especially Table 15-12, which summarizes much of the paper). [previously] [originally via]

Got oil?

sunshinesky — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:10:23 -0800

Need oil? Try microwaving your plastics.

Ghawar, Going, Gone...

DAJ — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:53:03 -0800

Heard enough about Pain at the Pump? The 24-hour news love to cover the "unreasonable" record gasoline prices, but the real issue is crude oil supply--and this latest installment of Stuart Staniford's highly detailed analysis of the world's largest oil field, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, provides new evidence of sharply declining production. Can Saudi Arabia really increase supply to meet world demand that is surging on growth in India and China? Signs point to no--in the past week they have again voted to maintain OPEC's "voluntary" production cuts, and their petroleum minister commented that there may not be a "need" to increase Saudi production much further.

Biodiesel my ass

braintoast — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:33:35 -0800

Millions of Hundred Dollar Ideas is one step closer to millions. The Powered by Gasoline sticker is at least a hundred dollar idea.

When the world was powered by the black fuel.

nervousfritz — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 12:05:19 -0800

gas: t r a c t o r p u l l s and d e m o l i t i o n d e r b i e s. Music, a bar graph, and a clown [youtube]

America's continued love affair with the automobile

jaimev — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:03:00 -0800

A study released by CERA has some interesting tidbits: the average motorist in 2005 used 703 gallons of gas, and drove 40 percent more than 25 years ago; the US has 1,148 registered personal vehicles for every 1,000 licensed drivers; the percentage of vehicles that are SUVs (including minivans and light trucks) is slowly going down from 55% in 2005 to 53% in 2006; the average fuel consumption for all vehicles is 19.8 mpg in 2005, a drop from when it peaked at 20.2 in 2001; and the share of U.S. household budgets going to gasoline and oil has has been relatively stable for decades, at about 3.8 percent in 2006.

Wal-Mart isn't completely evil after all?

SeizeTheDay — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 05:05:40 -0800

Perhaps Wal-Mart isn't completely evil? In a move that I'm sure will stun environmentalists, Wal-Mart wants to introduce E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) to its gas stations (which could potentially more than double the national locations that offer E85 from 800 to almost 2150).

Iraq - All oil, no gas.

insomnia_lj — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:46:21 -0800

Iraq - All oil, no gas. A consortium of 34 Turkish companies have joined together to stop all exports of petrol / refined oil products to Iraq, because Iraq's government owes them over $1 billion that they have so far been unable to pay. Iraq's largest refinery was forced to shut down in December, after its truck drivers walked off the job due to insurgent threats. They reopened ten days later, only to shut down again after an insurgent swarm attack killed and wounded more drivers. The refinery has once more ceased activity, as their reserves of refined fuel are full and there is no way to get them to their customers. Iraq's diesel-driven power plants are undersupplied too, leading to worsening outages.

No flux capacitor needed

mr_crash_davis — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 21:49:51 -0800

Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete.

I can't afford my gasoline.

Guerilla — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:08:16 -0800

I can't afford my gasoline.

"Every night MSN Autos analyzes prices from over 90,000 gas stations across the nation to show you gas prices in your neighborhood."

celerystick — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 08:38:03 -0800

"Every night MSN Autos analyzes prices from over 90,000 gas stations across the nation to show you gas prices in your neighborhood ....Don't eally know if this is as up to date as it says it is. Put in a zip code you know and see what you think. After loading a page you have to scroll down to the bottom to see the local gas station data. A timely link for U.S. readers.

What will we do when oil crashes?

graytopia — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:05:19 -0800

Resource wars and gas rations, what will be next ? I bet you didn't know we gobble oil like two-legged SUV's.

Gas prices too high? Try Europe.

Postroad — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 07:18:04 -0800

Gas prices too high? Try Europe. $7 a gallon? That's what drivers in Amsterdam pay. But Europeans have long adapted to high prices.

This sucks gas

Smedleyman — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:18:54 -0800

Oh, there's already a website devoted to making fun of stupid gas station websites. Huh.

"Can't you hear me knocking..."

Rothko — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:55:47 -0800

US energy bill is held up by a pro-MTBE provision that bipartisan Senators promised they would not sign into law. Nervous MTBE manufacturers, in an effort to divest themselves of potential asbestos-like liability lawsuits, have been donating millions in campaign contributions to the cause, despite peer-reviewed research pointing to lingering questions about safety (PDF) and utility (PDF).

Drive ten thousand miles on a gallon of petrol?

SharQ — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 05:19:12 -0800

Shell Eco Marathon UK is coming up in England (6-7 july). It is a race not for the swift, but for those who can drive immense distances in super-efficient vehicles. Two years ago, the current world record of 10,706 MPG was set at one of these events. The lessons learned are useful in development in other fuel-efficient cars, such as the 100 MPG Honda Insight. Interesting in these times of high oil prices, then, when considering that despite tactical driving, normal petrol cars rarely get better than 45 MPG. Diesels are slightly better, as illustrated on BBC Top Gear, where Clarkson drives an Audi A8 from London to Edinburgh and back on a single tank of diesel. That's 800 miles.

freedom through alcohol

delmoi — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 23:54:38 -0800

40% of the automotive sold fuel in brazil is ethanol, and brazil should be totally energy independent in five years. If they can do it, why not the US?

Thief Pumps $900 Worth Of Stolen Gasoline

azul — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:42:19 -0800

Gas Pump Hacker. "CHICAGO -- In a bold and outrageous theft staged in broad daylight, a driver pumped about $900 worth of gasoline at a suburban gas station. The man removed the panel of a pump in Country Club Hills and manipulated the mechanics of the pump so that it would continue to pump gas without registering inside the station... Other cars then pulled up to the pump and, apparently, cut deals with the thief, who then filled up their tanks and took off..."

The Long Emergency

QuestionableSwami — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:08:08 -0800

The Long Emergency is coming, according to James Howard Kunstler. Welcome to the new agrarian future. Buy 40 acres, a mule, and maybe some stock in the railroads.

The Future of the Car

Shanachie — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 11:01:34 -0800

Obsession: Mr. Singh’s Search for the Holy Grail American visionaries, cranks and con men have long sought the simple key to boosting the efficiency of the gasoline engine. Now a barefoot tinkerer in India believes he has unlocked the door. Is he for real?