I don’t know much about these new fandangled internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, but let me share with you what I have been able to glean so far.

ICE cars are slow. They need to be serviced often and maintenance is very expensive. They don’t have regenerative breaking, so every time you slow down you are wearing out brake pads and discs. They are loud, and they vibrate. You can’t pre-heat or pre-cool them. On cold days it takes forever for the heater to start blowing out warm air. The produce pollution, and not at a power station hundreds of kilometers away, but right where you are and where your children and grandchildren are. You can’t refuel them for free from your solar system. Actually, you can’t refuel them at home at all. The fuel is really expensive; about five times the cost of off–peak electricity per kilometer. That is when times are good. When times are bad it costs a lot more. This is because our fuel supply is not resilient. We don’t produce or refine much of it locally and we don’t keep much in storage. We mostly buy the oil from Russia and Middle-Eastern dictatorships that do bad things with the money. And this supply is vulnerable to political disruptions. Also, the local electricity grid employs a lot of Australians. Every dollar spent of petrol and diesel hurts our balance of payments and exports jobs. Other than those things, the technology seems fine.

If only there was a practical, commercially available alternative. Boré, who drives a plug in hybrid, and your correspondent thought hard about the problems with ICE cars, but no solution came to mind. In the absence of an alternative, Bore is proposing we go with Lew's suggestion of seeing if Bishop Scott can turn water into 95 octane unleaded. Boré has sent us these technical drawings of the proposal.

• We will be doing a final test of the Bonomatic 2000 at the Tennis Club in preparation for the May Races.  Next Wednesday after lunch for those who can help.
• Hutto is organising two luncheons, one being the traditional May Races Thoroughbred Club event.  Secure your tickets with Hutto.  Donations of prizes, for example wine, would also be greatly appreciated. 
• DIK in Footscray have invited us to tour their facility.  Talk to Bono if you are interested.
• The Hospital Auxiliary fundraiser will be at the Bayview Lodge, Friday 20^th March, 4.00pm until about 8.00. 

• Nooka notified us the ‘footy tipping was working beautifully’ with the leader on 5 (and nearly everyone else on 1 or 2 by all accounts).  Nooka has collected most of the footy tipping fees and will be away for the next two weeks.