What Dynosor says is true.... to a point.

Back in UK in the late 60's the Country was lurching from one crises of supply to another as each Government messed with the combination of cost and expenditure and the Unions being what they were designed for just levered in their policies for the wage structure and made things go topsy turvy.

One of the issues the Dept of Transport attempted to fix was the shortage of petrol, and so the speed limit was set at 50MPH max......in order to conserve supply and prevent queues at the petrol stations.

If you exceeded the limit you got fined......but the arguement was, it was more economical to go at 80 to 100MPH on the motorways (right hand lane only) using the 5th gear (overdrive) that was designed to slow the engine reves and make it more economical.... whatever.

Many cases went to court and argued on this fact.

I was driving a Morris 1000 at the time (1 litre engine)and so enjoyed 150 mpg as a normal occurence, and I never got my speedometer oddometer fixed so can only assume my petrol mileage figures were OK....LOL.

Down in OZ we have 5 types of fuel at the pumps, premium unleaded, unleaded, E85, diesel fuel and LPG.

I read that article on the Jaguar C-X75 concept car with great interest, not because it was space age tecno wow factor food, but because the concept was so fundamentally sound.

It uses two mini gas turbines to spin the generators for electric power, stored in Lithium batteries and also for extended runs on the open road, driving 4 seperate electric motors, one in each wheel.

The beauty is it uses any fuel it can burn in the turbines, not special highly refined petrol.
The turbines have only one moving part, no lubrication (air bearings), and no water cooling problems, it does use lots of fresh air, so don't hold your breath....LOL....and the CO2 emmission running direct on turbines is only 28 grams per.... whatever.

Break this down to the technology required for the average commuter car, single gas turbine, battery pack and 4 wheel electric drive, no idling losses at traffic lights, any fuel you can get, even salad oil off the Supermarket shelf, no need to refine crude oil for exotic fuel needs or process corn to make Ethanol, and you have the all round solution to the energy problem.

Back in the early 1800's, when steam was starting to get down to the farm, a number of stationary steam engines were designed, complete with boilers that ran on the waste by products from the threshing process, no coal needed to produce the motive power for threshing, just corn stalks.

The moment you start to climb the ladder of technology, the further from reality the target becomes.....and at this moment in time the techno nuts are very high up the ladder, dabbling with that deadly of all forces..... the mighty Atom smasher.

A scientist is not a simple person, that is he/she is a convoluted agglomeration of twisted facts that given the very fullness of the laboratory that spawned them, can make anything happen, but for all practical purposes the "happening" does not necessarily have to be attached to reality, and the end user has the uncomfortable experience of cleaning up the aftermath of technology gone on a wild ride of fantasy.

It becomes more deadly when a Government is influenced by the Techno Nuts in financing and applying their wild flights of fancy, by way of the taxpayers dollars.

At this moment in time the Ethanol flight of fancy is paying tribute to the car ownership fetish, where big is beautifull and small is not masculine, otherwise we would all be riding motor scooters or Mopeds to work as they do in the 3rd World economies, soon to be your mode of life, when the alternative is to walk.

The story is children....KISS...Keep It Stupid Simple, the simpler the better.
Ian.