As I mentioned earlier, I have been keeping tabs on the fuel consumption of my not so new car and I am happy to announce that there are some preliminary results. The chart on the right shows the average fuel consumption of my car under different conditions (the higher the bar, the better). Basically, the figure is about 10-ish km/L for normal city driving and about 14-ish km/L for long distance travel.

Although the fuel consumption figures are nothing to shout about, it is good enough for me. The figure only becomes quite bad in a traffic jam (the first bar). However, since I rarely go into the city anyway, this is quite unlikely to happen. So, normal driving would be about 10km/L. Please remember that these are empirical results of my personal driving style. So, your mileage may vary tremendously.

Overall, I am quite happy with things.

My measurement methodology is simple. Each time I pumped petrol, I filled up my tank. So, I can easily find out how much fuel has been used by converting the amount I paid for the fuel with the fuel price. Then, I note down the odometer readings and use that to calculate the km/L values. I tried to isolate the type of usage by filling up my tank before I go on long distance travels and immediately after I return.

Oops, I have just realised that I had not published a blog entry about my new car. More importantly, I have not shown you all any photos of it! So, here are a few photos of my new car. I took a few internal and external shots. It is what I call a “starter car” as it is a rather basic car with limited features.

Driving the car has been an absolute terror joy recently. Initially, I was not used to the responsiveness and power under the hood. Also, the brakes had a noticeable lag in responsiveness. The car is supposed to come with some sort of pseudo-ABS system, which might explain it. However, I’ve now grown better accustomed to it. These things take a few days after all.

I have even taken it for a long distance drive, down to Melaka and back, which is about 250km in total. I will be taking it for another long distance drive, down to Kluang and back, which will be about 500km in total. So, I will be needing my first 1000km service soon.

Like I mentioned earlier, manual cars are fun to drive. Only in manual cars can you actually feel the acceleration of the engine. Only in manual cars can you actually feel everything moving immediately to your commands. However, it is also only in manual cars where you can feel the aches and pains of driving through a 3 hour traffic jam.

I am also going to keep a log of the amount of fuel consumption for the car. I will then analyse this data to see how good or bad the fuel situation is. I have a feeling that the results will come back something like this: bad for traffic jams, great for driving long distances.

A couple of friends of mine from China decided to drop by to visit recently. One of them was attending a conference in Singapore and decided to spend a week in Malaysia as the air ticket only cost an additional £30. So, I played host for a few days and brought them around to a few places. I can only say that it has been an interesting experience for me as well.

On the very first day that I was supposed to meet them, we arranged to meet at KLCC. However, at the last minute, they went over to Bukit Bintang for some shopping. So, I drove from Jalan Ampang over to Pavilion and I learned an awful truth about my car. It does makan minyak (eat oil) as others have so rightfully mention.

Although the journey typically only takes about 5 minutes, I was stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, just trying to get there and another 2 hours, while trying to get out. It was during this time that I saw my fuel gauge drop from about 85% to about 65% full. Man, it really guzzles the petrol when the car isn’t moving. My friends commented that they hate the traffic and they hate spending their vacation in a jam. Well, I can certainly understand that.

I decided to take them away from KL as there were other things to see and eat outside. Since they’re from Guangzhou, they can always go to Hong Kong to do their shopping anyway. So, I brought them out to Kajang for some satay. I introduced them to the differences between nasi himpit and ketupat. I also happened to mention that the town of Kajang is famous for two things: the satay and me! :p

I also brought them to Putrajaya at night, which was a nice experience for me too. They managed to see the layout of our new administrative capitol and I realised that I can still remember the roads in the area, from when I was working there almost 8 years ago. I have never been there at night though, and the area does look a lot different at night. We were even lucky enough to encounter a pasar malam night market and I introduced them to our version of it.

I also brought them to Melaka for a day trip, which was also another interesting experience for me. The last time that I had been there was when I was still a kid. So, I have absolutely no memory of the place, much less the roads. However, I decided that it was an extremely small place and we could just randomly walk about. I brought them to the Jonker Walk area and also the A Famosa area. We had chicken rice balls for lunch and then came back.

In the process of spending a couple of days with them, I explained to them about our unique history, politics and geography that made us what we are today. We also took turns at bashing, Singapore. Seems like my friends didn’t like their time there. Their complaints were: bad food, fugly girls and downright boring place. They commented that Malaysia was much better in all ways. To me, this meant that my tour-guide work was successful.

Anyway, this was a chance to test my car on the highway, driving at speeds of around 100kmh for a long distance. All I can say is that I have been quite happy with the handling of the car so far. However, I have this bad habit of always forgetting to lock my car doors. This is a habit that needs changing – pronto!

** Photo courtesy of Feng’s camera and my tripod!!

As part of my recent adventure into buying cars, I had to take into account the total cost of ownership for each car. This was where I had to make assumptions about the price of fuel. A lot of people kept telling my that Korean cars have bad engines that will makan minyak (eat fuel) as compared to Japanese ones. However, the Japanese ones were also priced slightly higher than Korean cars.

So, as part of my decision making process, I had to make certain assumptions about fuel prices. As global fuel prices have been steadily falling, it dawned on me that pump prices may return to the low values that we once enjoyed. Taking this into account, I ended up with the decision to buy the Hyundai instead of say, the Toyota Vios or Honda City (local cars were definitely out of the picture). If the fuel prices continued to stay low, my purchase would be justified.

However, as I had previously blogged, I am also not quite happy with the way that the government has to artificially depress our economy. One of the ways to allow people to survive with this artificial depression is to keep prices of commodities low, including oil. So, I would also like to see a raise in the oil prices, as long as it is accompanied by a raise in basic wages as well.

(As you can see, I am full of contradictions!)

That is why I am none to happy with the idea mooted by our Minister of Consumer Affairs that a floor price be set for petrol. His argument is that with the lower global fuel prices, our government no longer had to subsidise fuel and should instead, take some profits by enforcing a fixed margin for petrol companies. This idea just makes my head spin. The government intends to fix both the price of oil, and also the profit margins of these companies.

In effect, our government intends to behave like a thug and rape reap all the profits from oil. Unlike monopolies, our government has the force of law behind it. This smells to me like an abuse of power and it stinks. This is akin to a stealth tax as the people will be pouring money into the government coffers whenever they purchase oil at the pump. Let us just call it what it is, a fuel tax.

A recent news article says that our government is looking at adopting a system whereby motorists can buy a fixed amount of subsidised fuel each month and pay for the rest at market rate. Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop said the system includes providing Malaysian motorists with a special card for buying subsidised fuel. Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Samad said that the present cash rebate system was not the perfect long-term solution, judging from the crowds of people rushing to collect their rebates. Shahrir said that as this was the first time the rebates were being given, there was plenty of room for it to be upgraded and improved upon.

All these important members of the cabinet, speaking on the issue, barely days after the fuel rebate system was kicked into service by the government, just does not make me sleep well at night. It clearly shows that this decision was rashly made without any sort of planning beyond the type that you do on the back of a napkin. However, that is not the main problem that I have with the whole idea of introducing a fuel card system.

Personally, I just see this fuel card system as a way for certain people to make more money. I do not understand why the government needs to issue a new card system for millions of citizens in the country, when everyone already owns the GMPC MyKad. Each and every one of us already has a smart card that holds our personal information.

Incidentally, with some foresight, our driving license information is already stored on these cards. The Road Transport Department (JPJ), is in charge of both motor vehicle registrations as well as issuing and renewing driving licences. Regardless of whether the rebate is per vehicle or per driver, the relational information between vehicle owners and valid drivers is already sitting in their databases.

On top of that, the MyKad is also tied to the MEPS system, which allows it to serve as a debit card. Therefore, the necessary framework for building a complete fuel payment and rebate system is already present on the card itself. As biometric information is also stored on the card, this can be used as an authentication layer and extra security level on the card.

There is seriously no need to build a completely new and independent system for this. Building a new an independent system would just incur unnecessary costs. It would mean that new smart cards would need to be issued. On top of that, an untested kludge would be needed to rebate someone on the fuel costs, extra to any present financial system already in place.

With the distribution of an extra card and payment system, I envision a new market cropping up for the sale and purchase of these cards. Assuming that the card allows certain amounts of fuel to be bought at below market rates, people who do not end up using their allocation of fuel will be able to sell their fuel balance to others, thus making themselves some cash. Assuming that the card has a total rebate value of RM625, anyone who needs a quick dose of cash could easily sell off the cards for RM500.

Either way, what happens is that the people who guzzle fuel, will end up abusing the system. What we actually need is a way to piggyback existing technology that is tested and secure. The MyKad already has authentication, payment and driving license information stored in it. The petrol kiosks are already securely connected to the banking networks through the credit card processing system.

Whenever fuel is purchased at the pump, the owner of the MyKad can be verified by visual inspection of the photograph, or by using a fingerprint reader. The license information can be captured along with the bank account information. These can be sent back through the banking network to the banks. The banks can then verify the information with JPJ and apply the rebates either as a discount on the payment or by debiting the person’s account directly, through the MEPS system which all the local banks tie into.

So, I don’t like this idea that is being bandied about. Period.

Alternative energy, especially renewable power, is an exciting area of work in engineering today. Everyone in the world seems to be interested in it. The trouble in the past, was that oil was extremely cheap. So, there was no impetus to push for alternative sources of energy. But the rising oil prices is changing all this and if it ever hits $200 a barrel, alternative energy technologies will be mighty cheap in comparison.

So, I was just thinking about things back in Malaysia. This is an interesting area of engineering research that I think our country could possibly contribute to. We have an abundance of sun, which is a practically infinite source of energy. Solar power is an obvious was to capture this energy. However, biofuels are another way to capture and convert direct energy from the sun.

Solar technology is fairly mature. The main problem in this area is efficiency. So, further research into this area would involve finding new materials or fabrication technologies to improve the conversion efficiencies. However, this is a high technology field. There is also another lower technology field that merely exploits the thermal energy put out by the sun. That is what’s used in many homes to generate their hot water, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Abundant thermal energy can be used for a variety of other applications.

The biofuel option is still in it’s infancy. As the world’s #1 exporter of palm oil, we already have an abundant source of potential energy. The key is to figure out how to harness this energy as a conventional energy source. However, palm oil isn’t the only potential source of biofuels. A lot of people are also looking at potential sources of ethanol. But there is a natural limit for any biological fuel source, that is the available land area. It is unlikely that any area developed as a farm, could double as anything else at the same time.

However, beyond developing technologies, we need to focus more on prudent exploitation. Land area is the limiting factor in either case and it would be useful to learn how to best manage a finite plot of land. Also, biofuel crops depend on the mineral content in the ground to grow. Therefore, the ultimate limiting factor will once again be the minerals in the ground.

I’m starting to believe in Stephen Hawking’s call for us to seriously explore extra-solar colonisation. It will ultimately, be our only salvation.

PS: It is now possible to build water pipes in silicon. This will allow us to construct solar cells that can convert photonic energy to free electrons, and convert thermal energy into steam. This can all be built on the same bulk silicon. It’ll also help to cool down all the solar cells that are being baked 12 hours a day, prolonging it’s lifespan and reducing maintenance costs.