The original poster:You seem to be saying on the one hand that...

The original poster:

You seem to be saying on the one hand that bio-diesel is going to result in the price of oil based fuels dropping (which would then result in oil based fuels being more competitive than the alternatives, including bio-diesel).

Then you go on to say that the rising price of food (because of diversion of resources into fuel crops) will make bio diesel more expensive. Again, this will make petrol more competitive.

The net result is that whatever fuel we use, it will continue to become more expensive. However, from an Australian point of view, natural gas is our best choice because we have lots of it and we could use it to reduce our reliance on imported oil based products. Not very useful for the many other areas that oil is consumed for (eg production of plastics)

A self defeating arguement.

There may be plenty of oil reserves left, BUT the cost of extraction rises progressively as the 'easy' to obtain resources are removed.

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About the fuel car:

It is a basic rule of thermodynamics (first law) that you can extract more energy out of an object than what would be required to create it: ergo - you cant split H2O into Oxygen & Hydrogen, then burn it (combining the two resultant products back into water) without having to add energy.

The only way for this reaction to occur (as it seems to be in the car) is that some other energy source must be added (eg lithium / magnesium hydride + catalyst) that is consumed. Thus the car is not water powered - it is 'hydride' powered(or whatever the energy source is).

Thus you may not use petrol - but you will use some other resource to run the car. The company announcement is bordering on a hoax.


Think about it - why else would the car only run for 1 hour - you could keep filling it with water all day otherwise. The energy loss will be from the replenishment of the mechanism used to split the water into fuel.

J.