There’s a company up this way called Cascade Airgas. In the UK, scientists have actually made gas out of air.
Of course, they’re going to have to produce more than 5 litres in three months…
And do so using renewable energy, rather than fossil fuels.
I’m really glad you provided a snippet from the site clarifying what you mean by ‘gas’. Your thread title was initially the most underwhelming I’ve read all month.
Tonight I think I’m going to go out into my back yard and see if I can make some soil out of dirt.
Thin air, sure, but if they had made it out of thick air, that would be right out.
Did they use unleaded air?
And for my next trick, I’m going to make liquid appear in this pail of water.
Pfft. I make gas out of thin air ALL THE TIME!
Now where’s my GasEx…
May have some real use as an energy-storage scheme, but this part is silly:
The cost of this fuel has to exceed the cost of the energy used to make it - which will necessarily be larger than the energy it contains.
Well, true, that’s a universal law. But as a practical matter, we have found ways to turn energy that we weren’t using into energy we can use. That’s how conventional coal and oil work - the sun put in the energy needed to produce the coal and oil and all we have to do is extract it.
But I agree that this doesn’t seem to be the case here.
The energy used to make the fuel exceeds the energy that comes out of it. If the cost of the energy to make the fuel comes down enough, then it would be viable.
Of course it would be a very long-term investment, since the scale would require an enormous amount of money. When I lived in the desert I could make a gallon of tea without using any gas or electricity. Just put the jug (a repurposed apple cider bottle) in a sunny spot outside. If I wanted to make 10,000 gallons without using power, I’d have to build a very large tank at a very great expense – and I’d still have to use power for pumping. I’ve read that the cost of a hybrid car overbalances the fuel savings such that it takes many years to recoup the investment. (I bought my Prius used, and I’ve kept a spreadsheet of fuel consumption – about 47.6 mpg over the past 4-1/2 years. I could figure out how long it would take to recoup my investment, but I won’t.)
The point is that if someone wants to make gasoline out of the carbon and hydrogen in the air, the cost of producing it will exceed the profit from selling it for many, many years. And for many (most?) applications it would be more efficient to use the wind/solar/whatever power directly than to make gasoline. Still, they have a point about it being a transportable fuel – for now.
I am prepared to adapt to running out of oil.
Not so much, air.
That is possible, if you’re using solar/wind/hydro/nuclear/etc. Something cheaper than fossil fuels.
Moreover, if you can use solar energy to create something you can use for your car at night, or wind energy to create something you cuse for your car in motion, the inefficiency – physical and economic – could be offset by the practical benefits.
Correction, what you made is “tea-like liquid”, unless that gallon of water came to a rolling boil before being used to rinse out the kettle, teapot and bone china so that you could make a proper cup of tea (BS6008). 
Yes, this is where it could be useful. Gasoline is stored energy, and a method of storing solar powered energy as a fuel would be very useful. Nuclear not so useful IMHO. That requires the production of more nuclear energy than we need, and there’s a downside to that.
I’m guessing you’ve never lived in a desert. 
Sun tea (no sugar, please) is a staple.
For hot tea, I agree with you though.
Those energy sources may be cheaper that fossil fuels, but none is orders of magnitude cheaper (as the quote implied might be the case).
I think the point is that it would become much more viable if improvements to the process bumped the efficiency from, say, 60% to 80% or 90%. Obviously you can’t reach 100% efficiency, but it’s probably possible to get closer than these prototypes.
This technology makes me wonder about what hydroelectric dams currently do for load balancing. Would it be worthwhile to use excess capacity to make carbon-neutral gasoline during low-demand hours?
I also wonder how cost-effective it could be to build an “air refinery”: A nuclear (or other green) power plant that powers a massively scaled-up version of this technology to make gasoline and/or jet fuel etc. . I suppose you could calculate the costs in dollars per liter or gallon of fuel.