Well, oil creates everything we need: Fertilizer, food, transport, steel and so on.

The average desktop computer requires ten times its weight in fossil fuel for manufacture and transport to your desk.

Automobiles require between 1,100 - 2,200 gallons of oil for manufacture.

For two centuries, economies world-wide have been absed entirely on growth. Scarcity of oil will end that.

So if there's an oil crash, you won't have to worry about what to put in your car - you'll have substantially more to worry about.

And again - I don't want to sound like Chicken Licken or whatever his name was ("The sky is falling!"), but this is a looming crisis and I think worth bearing in mind.

south africa used to produce all there fuel from coal untill a few years back and changed over to oil based fuel. the pricew ent sky high and still is rising.
Maybe they need to take a look at a whole new angle for fuels and see if they can get it from mud or something or sand there is a fair bit of that around.

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www.minicranks.com add me to your watch list and come back again soon, under construction.

Being involved in the Aviation industry this problem is becoming rather scary too - Whether at low level general aviation or in scheduled transport services the prices are sky rocketing.

Just an indication of this was Qantas having to lay off hundreds of people even after an excellent profit indication - it's not in response to current costs but their analysis of the price of oil in the next 12 months which for jets (JETA1 fuel is just kerosene) is expected to rise 50-100%.

It's a grim new world! But smile everybody

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Storing hydrogen is exactly like storing LPG, the hindenberg is a common referal to how unsafe hydrogen is, however, the hindenberg, although rather attractive was not built to withstand that forces at play on that fatefull night, many things happend that caused the explosion.

It is true that you require more hydrogen to power a car then petrol but, that has been taken care of already the only real problem now is filling up the tank which takes about half an hour to complet (don't know about you but I don't realy want to be spending half an hour at the petrol station!

tanks are much thicker for hydrogen and it's compressed gas, not liquid like LPG. Can't liquify it at room temps, it needs to be seriously cold for that. Like on the space shuttle...

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DrMini- 1970 wasaMatic 1360, Mk1S crank, 86.6HP (ATW) =~125 @ crank, 45 Dellorto (38 chokes), RE282 sprint cam, 1.5 rockers, 11.0:1 C/R.

Nah, is more like storing CNG (compressed natural gas).

That's a good fuel too, but likewise takes too long to refuel

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Too many cars, and too little time.

That Zeppelin never did explode though. It just burnt completely but I remember reading somewhere that it was almoust silent. Plus wasnt the Hindenburg fire a product of static electricity created by its huge body moving through hot air reacting with the exotic pain coating they used for the canopy? The hidrogen was more like a secondary fuel source for that fire, but the actual baloon coating was on fire first. I think

How about Biodiesel fuels?

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Starlet Conversion:
http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15484

Biodiesel is the most promising alternative by a considerable margin, especially for countries like NZ & Australia with agricultural economies which could convert some production to biodiesel. It will do nothing for the US (but who cares?) and to add to their woes, the minimum arable land per person to survive is about 1.2 - 2 acres. They currently have 0.6 acres per person and supplement it with massive imports.

So a clever and entrepenurial fellow would look at retrofitting high performance diesel motors which run biodiesel into today's fleet of cars...

as i see it, there's only one solution to the oil problem
less people, less problem
and might as well get rid of the people that are using it more than everyone else

The other alternative is Methanol.

Its made from sugar cane, is unleaded, safer than traditional petrol, cheap, and it totally renews itself in 11 years.

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Cheap, Fast, Reliable. Choose two.

the problem with that is that it takes oil to transport food, without oil, food is gonna be scarce, so you're gonna be wanting to eat that sugar cane

The other problem is that the area required to produce enough plant material to replace petrol is too large by a factor of about a million (give or take). Plus there's no infrastructure for methanol, and cars would need serious modifications.

Spaceboy is right: fewer people with a massive change in habits. Just be glad you don't live in Los Angeles: No food, no transport, and no job.

For a start they need to restrict the sale of anything above 4cyl to industry and rural.

ah Capitalism !
Market forces drive the price of fuel up.
People buy smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
It requires less energy & petrochemical products to produce smaller cars.
The world is saved

Remember: be glad you drive a mini, the original economy car

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Too many cars, and too little time.