Monday, October 10, 2005

Coconut oil in your petrol tank!

Some university students in Newzealand claimed that coconut oil can be used as fuel in automobile engines. If that ever reaches mainstream, our cities are going to smell like Kerala-style restaurants! A whacky solution to the pollution problem as well.

This immediately brings to my memory one Ramar Pillai, who, around 1997-98, claimed that he could 'make' petrol out of just herbs/shrubs. Now that was some news! Here was an idea that could solve India's fuel woes as well as parthenium menace ;-) But alas, his trick was busted after a few days, but he maintained that his 'trick' was 'genuine'. I read a news after a few years that the Pillai guy continued to happily use his own herbal petrol in his TVS50. If he could _really_ make fuel out of some flora, I would expect him to at least become rich enough to drive a Merc.

Okay, back to coconut dudes of NZ. They claim that this is a possible answer to rising fuel cost woes. Well, I for one am totally against this whole idea. Do they know that we are already paying 12Rs for a coconut in Bangalore? If your family is from the west-coast districts of Karnataka, you know that pretty much all of the daily foods have coconut as an ingredient. So anything that can take the cost of coconuts up, I am against. Also, if cost of coconut oil doubles, what are Indians going to use in their hair? Petrol? And make it easy for bride-burning in-laws?

A stock-market tip - time to buy shares of parachute coconut oil company!

No comments:

Post a Comment