Is the rising cost of fuel pinching your pocket ? Are you losing sleep over the fact that the high price of fuel would further lead to an increase in prices of other essential goods ?
Well, it’s surely a reason to to worry about and there seems to be no respite in sight. People around the world are feeling the pinch with Fuel costs dampening Independence Day travel plans in the US (read here), Australia (read here) and many other places. As written by us previously (check here) the need of the hour is too either cut down on our energy consumption or develop more fuel efficient sources of energy or if we’re just too lazy to do any of that, we would need to find more reserves of oil soon.
“There is lots of oil under the North Pole,” said geologist Donald Gautier of the US Geological Survey at the World Petroleum Congress this week. He estimated that the Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil. But while extracting the oil from the harsh Arctic environment poses unprecedented technical challenges, the biggest barrier to exploration is the disputed ownership of the region with five countries namely Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States claiming interest in the region’s resources (Source).
While it would be great if we can find more reserves of oil soon, it would still not provide a long term solution to the global energy crisis. However if we could invent a car that would give a mileage of “100 Kilometers per liter“, than that would go a long way in cutting down fuel costs. Well, if Volkswagen sticks to it’s plan then we could see such a Car on the roads by the end of 2010.
Volkswagen is reportedly planning to build a limited production run of ultra-efficient city cars that could travel from Sydney to Brisbane on just 10 litres of fuel. Volkswagen first unveiled a concept version of the tandem two-seater car at a company annual general meeting back in 2002, predicting it could see production in 2012. The original bullet-shaped concept car looked more like a solar vehicle than regular passenger transport. It was 3.65m long, just 1.25m wide and less than a metre tall, with a jet fighter-style gull-wing canopy door. The side mirrors were replaced by cameras to improve the aerodynamics. The 2002 concept was built entirely from composite carbon-fiber reinforced material and weighed just 290kg. (Source)
Now that’s seems like a real solution to our energy woes and people would rather goto work in such a car than cancel travel plans with their family. Many Car companies are also trying to make Hydrogen Cars and cars that would run on other renewable sources of energy, but a recent report (read here) suggests that these would not be available commercially till at least 2020.
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