PUBLIC MARKS from micah with tag fuel

The plot contains data from 1022 fill-ups.

Doing it yourself means buying one of Sasher's stills or still-building kits. A fully assembled ethanol kit still costs about $1,400, and Sasher, who runs Dogwood Energy, says with the price of gasoline nudging toward $3 a gallon, business is booming. In the last two months, orders are up 300 percent.

Precisely 10 years ago (April 29, 1996) as gas prices reached a shocking $1.27 a gallon, President Bill Clinton ordered his Energy and Justice departments to launch investigations to find out why. In my column that week, I offered a wild guess as to why: "supply is down and demand is up."

We thought we could do a much better job than Toyota. Doubling the car's efficiency seemed achievable. I've worked in the automotive sector and in battery industry and there is a huge skills gap between the two. One does not realise what the other is doing. That's given us a huge opportunity.

Stepping up is something the big automakers have yet to do. They're still in the early stages of marketing hybrid cars while playing catch-up to the Bad News Bears of auto shop.

German Loremo AG will introduce their ultra Efficient Car at the Motor Show 2006 in Geneva next week.

You probably don't know it, but the answer to America's gasoline addiction could be under the hood of your car. More than five million Tauruses, Explorers, Stratuses, Suburbans, and other vehicles are already equipped with engines that can run on an energy source that costs less than gasoline, produces almost none of the emissions that cause global warming, and comes from the Midwest, not the Middle East.

The Aptera prototype, which is halfway to completion, will go for up to 330 miles on a gallon of gas thanks to an aerodynamic design and the lightweight composites that make up the chassis.