Motorists!! Fill your tanks!

[onimolap]

It's already too late to avoid the increase in fuel duty. But on 4th it'll go up again with VAT.

3.5p a litre

fuck me!

this is good advice generally, ran out of petrol this morning for the second time in about a week

:( Bollocks.

I'm going to have to get a tiny little electric car to replace my 4x4 monster!

I remember the good old days when it was 60 odd p a litre!

am so glad I swapped my 3.9 litre petrol range rover for a heavyweight winter horse rug and some £50 notes

I'll bet!

and I will chant that to myself about half an hour from now when I am carrying hay and water for miles across terrain that only a 4x4 can cross

and also when I need to tow horse trailer with my little convertible

if only I could think things through?

We reckon that after the VAT rise, it'll cost us over £100 per tankful. Yuck! At least this car's more fuel efficient than the last. And I think duty goes up again in April......

Megglevache - I'll join you with the zimmer! I remember the fuss when the price approached £1.00 per gallon (that's 4.54 litres for post-imperial types).

How long before it is to expensive to drive to work

My DH works in a smallish town, we live in a village, there is no public transport that covers the right areas, so public transport not a viable alternative.

I am currently looking for work, but as I took 3 years out to obtain my degree, keep getting told my employment chances are not very good , however soon it will be so expensive for him to drive to and from it will not make sense for him to work...

Hang on, at 2/1% extra (the VAT rise) it means the cost must be close on 98 quid at the moment.

I know it will have an overall effect but it's "only" a tenner on every 500 pounds one spends, so while that does add up in non-food shopping, fuel, and so on, how many items would you buy before the VAT rise on the basis of saving 10 quid for every 500 you spend?

OK 10.50 roughly, not just a tenner, but if you are spending 500 quid anyway, that tenner is almost insignificant.

2.1%

Any oil-derived product is going to get more expensive because oil is a finite resource. As a tree-hugger I think this is a good thing as it forces us all to wean ouselves off our oil dependancy.

10 years ago there were fuel protests because it was hitting 100p a litre. Oh happy days...

It's going to hit more than oil derived products - the extra costs to haulage firms will be significant and will be passed on in the prices to customers of all goods using such distribution networks (ie nearly everything). Clearly not huge noticeable price rises, but an inflationary pressure nonetheless.

OK slightly off subject, but isn't an electric car just using a different type of fossil fuel? Or am I being a complete numpty

So agree that it needs to be understood that oil is not a never ending product, but isn't the high prices just helping the rich get richer before their golden goosesupply runs out?

And how is an electric car going to really help?

Oil should probably be kept more carefully as engine lubrication rather than being processed to make the fuel to be burned.

As for electric cars and how to charge them, well, despite the negative views on nuclear power, that (along with solar and hydro) there are ways other than using gas or coal in power stations until those fuels run out.

Something which should come in the course of time will be a phone-box sized nuclear power cell which could be used to power the home and recharge an electic car overnight.

Another idea (which I think has started to get venture capital in Israel and USA) is where a series of battery-changing centres (in place of petrol stations) will be built, forming a network where suitably equipped cars would stop when their battery level is low.

Stopping at the station, an automated/robotic system would lift out the used battery unit (made up from lots of battery cells) and replace with a fully charged unit. Weight would be substantial hence no human intervention, battery 'refill' would be done in under a minute and the used battery unit would then be recharged (and perhaps after a certain number of cycles could be taken out of use for any poorly performing cells in the unit to be identified and replaced).

The 'dead' cells would be recycled, perhaps stripping them down and rebuilding or dismantled back to constituent parts and then raw materials used could be purified and used in the manufacture of completely new cells for use in further battery units.