Fuel for thought
Well, no real big updates on my life at the moment. Unless you count the fact there is a man standing outside my house right now with a chainsaw who has agreed to cut down a troublesome tree for $250. Unless I have to take him to the hospital, an event I have not entirely ruled out, for the moment I have some free time to just fill space.
Like most people, I have been feeling the pinch caused by fuel prices. Not just in personal transportation, the cost of shipped goods is going up as well. The price of groceries is even going up. I really don't see gas prices dropping really significantly any time soon. So, I have been considering what the alternatives are and here are some of my thoughts.
Currently there are a few options to traditional gasoline powered cars. The most obvious is "don't drive." Now, that is a realistic option in some areas. Some places are well developed for bicycles or walking. Many others have an excellent public transportation systems. If you live in the Washington DC area, for example, there is very little reason to drive a car. The subway system there is wonderful. That is one of the few places I have ever flown into and did not have to rent a car after I arrived.
Chicago has its trains, New York has subways, San Francisco has trolleys. All good systems. Most cities, however, use buses. Buses are cheap to implement, but make for a difficult public transportation infrastructure. The reason that I think less people use them is that they are a pain to figure out. They take routes and so you must know a route as well as a destination. Getting to work may involve driving six miles to the nearest bus stop, getting on one bus that goes the wrong way. Getting off there and transferring to another bus that is more or less the correct route, and then arriving seven blocks away from your office almost an hour before you are supposed to be there because the next bus that is going to come by this area won't arrive until two hours after you start. At least you didn't get on one of those routes at a time where the bus pulls over for one hour in the middle of nowhere for the bus driver to take lunch.
It is hard to just drop in on an unfamilar bus and arrive at an intended destination without some heavy upfront research.
In some cities buses work better than others. Smaller cities they make a lot of sense. Why bother with a more elaborate system when the city itself is home to only five thousand people? Probably less than six routes can take you everywhere. But larger cities and cities with a tourist industry need something that is more simplistic with a destination focused scheme.
Louisville has two public transporation systems. The bus and the trolley. The bus has the typical bus problems. Unreliable schedules, widely spaced out stops that are fairly inconvienent, complex routes, and typical customer service related problems. The trolley, on the other hand, works fairly well. They work in loops along a grid fashion. You wait at a stop on a north-south street and when a trolley arrives going north it will continue to do so until it loops back. So, you ride it north until you get to the street you are wanting to go to, and then transfer to an east to west trolley if you need to go further down the street laterally. It costs $0.25 a ride, the stops are fairly evenly spaced, and a trolley comes by ever 10 or 15 minutes. Very good for shuttling people around. Unfortunately, it is only for the downtown area. If it extended out of there into the metro area I think more people would use it. Think about it this way. Assuming someone has a round trip commute of 15 miles that can take 2/3 a tank of gas. At $4 a gallon, that is almost $3 to get to and from work. Even if it takes a transfer with a trolley, that is $1 for the entire day. Yeah, I'd be willing to save $2 a day and not drive myself.
Unforunately, the US just really doesn't have a good infrastructure for public transportation. However, I do expect this to change over time. Amtrack is reporting that they are finally making a profit so maybe public trains will make a comeback.
In the meantime, let's talk about cars.
Right now the current craze is electric-gas hybrids. Now, I am in a minority opinion about these cars. My opinion is, as much as I like the idea, these cars are dumb. Unless you are one of the people who do an after market modification to make it a plug in (which will give you maybe 30 miles of travel on pure electric at best), you are paying more money for a compact car to get gas mileage that can be accomplished by purely mechanical means. The Geo Metro (same car as the Suzuki Cultus) averaged 45 mpg. Some hybrids don't do that well except in city where regenerative braking helps out and the initial electric reserve pays off. Even adjusting for inflation, these cars were cheaper (and are much cheaper to pick up used) and were getting similar results. The thing about gas-electric hybrids is that they are sort of combining the worst features of both gas and electric engines. Gas engines requires lots of routine mechanical maintenance. Filters, belts, fluids, and parts that wear down. Electric motors, on the other hand, have very minimal wear and tear but batteries are expensive. Hybrids have huge batteries. So, in addition to the cost of gas, parts, and wear and tear there are the batteries which will tend to die within about five years and cost around $6k to replace. This is why I think gas-electric hybrids are a bad idea. It really gains you very little and it has an added additional cost.
Now, this is not to say I am against hybrids in of themselves. There are other types of hybrid cars that I like a lot and I think have great potential. BMW is currently developing a steam hybrid. While this may conjur all sorts of steampunk steam engine fantasies, what they are actually proposing is to use a steam driven mechanism to recapture some of the wasted heat of a gasoline engine to boost efficiency. Early figures suggest it should be more efficient than gas-electric hybrids. Hydraulic hybrids also show a lot of potential, but right now the problem is trying to shove it down to a size small enough for a standard car. Right now to get any real efficiency it has to be big. However, Ford is suggesting they are working on a prototype F150 hydraulic hybrid truck to be released later this year. I'm not holding my breath, but if true that could be a major boost to the auto industry.
Mind you, no hybrid in the world is going to actually solve the gas crunch problem. It just delays it for awhile. My father and I are in a disagreement about this. He's probably more educated on the subject that I am so if you side with him I won't be insulted. He thinks that buying an older car that was more fuel efficient, like a Metro, or even the VW TurboDiesel Jetta (Diesel is more expensive per gallon than gas, but the Jetta has a fuel efficiency of 45 mpg and it is a compact car. It gets better efficiency than a Smart Car and is larger) is more than adequate tactic. If people just significantly cut down on gas usage and we learn as a nation to conserve fuel then we can stall for time for clever people to address problems.
While I agree in principle with his thinking, my problem is still that we are burning fossil fuels. I personally would like to have this dropped to a minimum. Why? Because petroleum is a finite product and I like plastics. Seriously. Every drop we burn to move a vehicle is one more drop we can't use for other purposes like plastics, medicines, or for industrial applications. As strange as that thinking is, I think that even if everyone drove a non polluting car powered by a uranium slug that provided a lifetime of power without refueling we will still need petroleum for other purposes. I want to conserve this for the future until we find viable alternatives for every possible use. Got it?
So, with people driving around their H3s and SUVs getting 8 gallons to the mile that they purchased four years ago when gas was cheap enough until we didn't care, I think the unrest is a good time to allow the seed for alternative fuel ideas to take root. People are willing to talk about something rather than the old standby.
Here are my thoughts on some of the alternatives that being tossed around.
Let's start off with the golden goose. Hydrogen. Everyone loves hydrogen. You put hydrogen gas in one end and out comes water. We have, for all practical purposes, an unlimited supply of water to use as fuel. What's to hate about this? Well, mostly I hate that it keeps getting dangled in front of us every time we start talking about alternatives with a promise of "just you wait. This will be here in 5 years and it will revolutionize everything! You'll see!" So no one follows other lines of research because this is such a sure thing. Hydrogen cars have been five years away for about 15 years now.
The thing is that hydrogen and oxygen produce a lot of energy but making practical use of this is a lot more difficult than just burning something. Current hydrogen cell technology essentially works by allowing hydrogen to bind with oxygen to form water, but it will not allow the electron to cross this barrier and, instead, it has to go the long way through the engine and incidentally provides a power source. As simple as this idea sounds, it requires some very expensive materials and the engines are very fragile and are not hardy to cold temperatures. They tend to break in the cold. There is a reason most hydrogen cars are demonstrated in the desert. No one wants a $300,000 prototype to crack and be ruined because someone can't read a weather report. So, before we see this miracle we first have to figure out how to make these machines work in cold temperatures. We have to figure out how to get the cost down to 25% of their current cost. We have to develop a hydrogen fuel infrastructure. This is not something 5 years away. This is a solution much further down the road than people would like to suggest. Fifteen years is a possibility. But that is 15 years of the current infrastructure becoming more unweidly and gas prices continuing to skyrocket faster than inflation. Sounds like most people will be bankrupt just trying to afford to go to work in such a setup. This is why I would prefer to focus on alternatives that are real and practical today.
Of these that are out there, ethanol gets tossed around as a hope. In South America it is actually already in use and has been for many years. So why can't the USA adopt it? Well, a large part of the problem is that the Northern Hemisphere really doesn't have a good crop that yeilds enough alcohol. Sugar cane is a good crop and Southern countries can grow it and have high yields of alcohol. In the USA we are looking at corn because we really don't have another good crop. Currently it costs about 1.6 gallons of gas for every 1 gallon of ethanol we generate due to transporting corn to the processing plants. Whoops. That means we are wasting fuel. What's more fermentation is actually an inefficient way to create ethanol. Do you know the cheapest and most efficent way to make alcohol? Synethsizing it from petroleum. Current thinking is that if we can figure out a way to ferment all of corn plants rather than just the seeds then maybe it will be efficient enough to replace current infrastructure. Basically, this is going to require someone to either bioengineer some interesting microorganisms, which brings in all sorts of federal agencies to investigate and approve the safety of this by years of testing, or we discover some helpful enzymes. Either way, this is going to be a few years. Don't expect to see that alcohol powered car for a few more years.
Biodiesel is another one that gets a lot of talk. Biodiesel, in my opinion, is a really good idea for right now. This idea will become a problem if it is implemented en mass. Why? Well, since so few people are willing to take the time to make their own fuel, right now you can find people willing to donate their problem (wasted grease) to you for free. It is possible to get a production car going on extremely cheap fuel. If lots of people have biodiesel, then there is a market for wasted oil and grease and it is subject to market demands. Combine that with the fact that biodiesel clouds at low temperature and needs to be mixed with regular diesel, I just don't see this as taking off in a huge way. If it stays fairly low key, it is great for the people willing to work with it. Especially if they purchase one of the aforementioned VW Jetta TurboDiesels. 45 miles per gallon on fuel you made yourself? Yeah, that's workable. But it is going to require a lot of extra work on your part.
A friend of mine are evenly split on the idea of steam powered cars. Yes, you read that right. Steam power. Steam power used to be the high performance standard for cars and gasoline engines were considered slow and clunky. The big thing that hurt steam power was it took so long to build up pressure and gasoline cars could be started instantly. Well, times have changed and there are ways to create flash boilers or maintaining a pressurized system so that a steam car that has no wait is possible. This would be an external combustion engine rather than an internal combustion. The downside is that external combustion engines pollute more. They are only about half as efficient as an internal combustion engine, which even then aren't very efficent, and they do not burn very cleanly. The advantage is that they will burn anything. You can easily set it up to run off solid, liquid, or gas power. You could slap in a propane tank, fire it up, and drive until you run out and then load it up on grass clippings and newspaper. My friend thinks that the versitility of steam is going to make it more attractive in the upcoming years. While I agree there will probably be a market for it in that it is almost impossible to ever run out of fuel, I have my doubts that it will really take off because there is very little incentive for deep pockets to back it.
Currently oil companies are about the most profitable companies in the world. They have a solid monopoly out there on fuel. Why support development of a car that burns anything and everything? Who is going to profit from this? The manufacturer of the car, a few parts dealers, but that's mostly it. Everyone else is going to have erratic gains. Someone may fuel theirs up with vegetable oil while someone else is shoveling coal. It distributes wealth all over the place depending on what is available and, while that is nice, no one walks away with the big check. Plus, they pollute more.
I predict a small market.
It possibly may surprise some people that as much as I do not like gas-electric cars I am fully supportive of electric cars in of themselves. This is a definite place where my father and I disagree. He feels electric is stupid in that it is not very portable and there is no getting around battery costs. I agree. But the thing is that it is a $6k every 5 to 10 years versus $200+ every years in regular mechanical maintenance plus the cost of batteries. I think having expenses in one huge lump rather than distributed out over the years works out the same. Electric engines require almost no maintenance and are extremely efficient. Both of which I think are good selling points. Batteries also don't fail all at once. There will just be a decline in its ability to hold a charge and you can plan ahead to some extent. Which is a little different than, say, having the head gasket blow while you are on a road trip which is something we currently have to risk.
Right now most electric vehicles are classified as NEVs or Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. They have a very limited range, typically 30 miles or less, and are limited to speeds under 35 mph. This is fine for in city use for most driving people do. Anything with a range of 50 miles will cover the needs of most commuters 90% of the time. Is this ideal? No, not really. I think for electric to really take off they need a range of roughly 100 miles at speeds up to 50 mph. I think 50 mph most people will tolerate and it should be fast enough until it is not too vexing. I also think that after about two hours most people are fine with taking a break. From there we need to add facilities at regular gas stations that allow rapid charging. If people can drive two hours and then take off again after 20 minutes I think there will be a market for these cars. Particularly if they can be shown to be a cheaper alternative.
Right now there are a range of electric vehicles. At the high end we have the Telsa Roadster which is a sports car that can do 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds and can go 220 miles to one charge. All for $109,000. At the low end we have the Zap that is currently working on this problem from the other end. Sell low end cars and work up.
If it takes off, I think XP Vehicles may find an interesting market niche with their idea of inflatable cars. It's a bit difficult to digest, but if it works then it should keep the costs low enough that people may buy it as a second car. You have your gas guzzling car for big trips and, for an extra $5k you can have the electric inflatable you use for around town.
Personally two vehicles I think would do very well over on this side of the Atlantic if they established a larger US presence are the Twike and the similar but smaller Aerorider. These are human-electric hybrids. That is to say they are electic vehicles with pedaling as an assist.
The idea probably won't catch on except for the environmentally concious or people obsessed with health, but I still feel it is a good idea and with lots of potential. If rowing is more your style, then perhaps a Human Car is more your speed-and I mean speed literally. The prototype is entirely human powered and has obtained speeds over 60 mph. Impressive in that is pure human muscle.
To sum up, if you are thinking about alternatives to your old gas guzzler there are quite a few alternative out there being tossed around each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Will any of them entirely replace the gasoline car? No, not likely or at least not for the next few years. While a lot of people talk about gas-electric hybrids as if they are the next big thing I would advise everyone to hold back just a little while longer and wait for the other shoe to drop. The time when the first few hybrids batteries are starting to fail should be coming around soon and you may want to wait to see what public opinion is by then. My advice if you just want to conserve fuel but use an existing standard is not to look to the future but, rather, look to to the past. Diesel cars and economy gasoline cars from bygone years actually had surprising gas mileages. If you do choose diesel this also opens up an opprotunity to try to make your own fuel for close to nothing for summer months and you can mix it in a 50/50 ratio during the winter. If you must buy a hybrid to feel green, I would suggest something other than electric. Hydraulic and steam both look promising.
Although I have my reservations about gasoline and electric, I do generally feel electric is possibly the potential wave of the future. Especially if mass transit improves then a neighborhood vehicle may be what most people need. In Europe there is a suggestion for creating stands to rent electric cars in some areas so that rather than owning a car people just pay for them as needed.
Under the subset of electric vehicles, I am actually fairly impressed with human-hybrid electrics. Not that they are any more practical, but it gives a commuter a chance to feel like they are doing something healthy other than just sitting idly in a traffic jam. This is also handy for people who may like the idea of biking to work but live too far from where they work for this to be practical.
Like most people, I have been feeling the pinch caused by fuel prices. Not just in personal transportation, the cost of shipped goods is going up as well. The price of groceries is even going up. I really don't see gas prices dropping really significantly any time soon. So, I have been considering what the alternatives are and here are some of my thoughts.
Currently there are a few options to traditional gasoline powered cars. The most obvious is "don't drive." Now, that is a realistic option in some areas. Some places are well developed for bicycles or walking. Many others have an excellent public transportation systems. If you live in the Washington DC area, for example, there is very little reason to drive a car. The subway system there is wonderful. That is one of the few places I have ever flown into and did not have to rent a car after I arrived.
Chicago has its trains, New York has subways, San Francisco has trolleys. All good systems. Most cities, however, use buses. Buses are cheap to implement, but make for a difficult public transportation infrastructure. The reason that I think less people use them is that they are a pain to figure out. They take routes and so you must know a route as well as a destination. Getting to work may involve driving six miles to the nearest bus stop, getting on one bus that goes the wrong way. Getting off there and transferring to another bus that is more or less the correct route, and then arriving seven blocks away from your office almost an hour before you are supposed to be there because the next bus that is going to come by this area won't arrive until two hours after you start. At least you didn't get on one of those routes at a time where the bus pulls over for one hour in the middle of nowhere for the bus driver to take lunch.
It is hard to just drop in on an unfamilar bus and arrive at an intended destination without some heavy upfront research.
In some cities buses work better than others. Smaller cities they make a lot of sense. Why bother with a more elaborate system when the city itself is home to only five thousand people? Probably less than six routes can take you everywhere. But larger cities and cities with a tourist industry need something that is more simplistic with a destination focused scheme.
Louisville has two public transporation systems. The bus and the trolley. The bus has the typical bus problems. Unreliable schedules, widely spaced out stops that are fairly inconvienent, complex routes, and typical customer service related problems. The trolley, on the other hand, works fairly well. They work in loops along a grid fashion. You wait at a stop on a north-south street and when a trolley arrives going north it will continue to do so until it loops back. So, you ride it north until you get to the street you are wanting to go to, and then transfer to an east to west trolley if you need to go further down the street laterally. It costs $0.25 a ride, the stops are fairly evenly spaced, and a trolley comes by ever 10 or 15 minutes. Very good for shuttling people around. Unfortunately, it is only for the downtown area. If it extended out of there into the metro area I think more people would use it. Think about it this way. Assuming someone has a round trip commute of 15 miles that can take 2/3 a tank of gas. At $4 a gallon, that is almost $3 to get to and from work. Even if it takes a transfer with a trolley, that is $1 for the entire day. Yeah, I'd be willing to save $2 a day and not drive myself.
Unforunately, the US just really doesn't have a good infrastructure for public transportation. However, I do expect this to change over time. Amtrack is reporting that they are finally making a profit so maybe public trains will make a comeback.
In the meantime, let's talk about cars.
Right now the current craze is electric-gas hybrids. Now, I am in a minority opinion about these cars. My opinion is, as much as I like the idea, these cars are dumb. Unless you are one of the people who do an after market modification to make it a plug in (which will give you maybe 30 miles of travel on pure electric at best), you are paying more money for a compact car to get gas mileage that can be accomplished by purely mechanical means. The Geo Metro (same car as the Suzuki Cultus) averaged 45 mpg. Some hybrids don't do that well except in city where regenerative braking helps out and the initial electric reserve pays off. Even adjusting for inflation, these cars were cheaper (and are much cheaper to pick up used) and were getting similar results. The thing about gas-electric hybrids is that they are sort of combining the worst features of both gas and electric engines. Gas engines requires lots of routine mechanical maintenance. Filters, belts, fluids, and parts that wear down. Electric motors, on the other hand, have very minimal wear and tear but batteries are expensive. Hybrids have huge batteries. So, in addition to the cost of gas, parts, and wear and tear there are the batteries which will tend to die within about five years and cost around $6k to replace. This is why I think gas-electric hybrids are a bad idea. It really gains you very little and it has an added additional cost.
Now, this is not to say I am against hybrids in of themselves. There are other types of hybrid cars that I like a lot and I think have great potential. BMW is currently developing a steam hybrid. While this may conjur all sorts of steampunk steam engine fantasies, what they are actually proposing is to use a steam driven mechanism to recapture some of the wasted heat of a gasoline engine to boost efficiency. Early figures suggest it should be more efficient than gas-electric hybrids. Hydraulic hybrids also show a lot of potential, but right now the problem is trying to shove it down to a size small enough for a standard car. Right now to get any real efficiency it has to be big. However, Ford is suggesting they are working on a prototype F150 hydraulic hybrid truck to be released later this year. I'm not holding my breath, but if true that could be a major boost to the auto industry.
Mind you, no hybrid in the world is going to actually solve the gas crunch problem. It just delays it for awhile. My father and I are in a disagreement about this. He's probably more educated on the subject that I am so if you side with him I won't be insulted. He thinks that buying an older car that was more fuel efficient, like a Metro, or even the VW TurboDiesel Jetta (Diesel is more expensive per gallon than gas, but the Jetta has a fuel efficiency of 45 mpg and it is a compact car. It gets better efficiency than a Smart Car and is larger) is more than adequate tactic. If people just significantly cut down on gas usage and we learn as a nation to conserve fuel then we can stall for time for clever people to address problems.
While I agree in principle with his thinking, my problem is still that we are burning fossil fuels. I personally would like to have this dropped to a minimum. Why? Because petroleum is a finite product and I like plastics. Seriously. Every drop we burn to move a vehicle is one more drop we can't use for other purposes like plastics, medicines, or for industrial applications. As strange as that thinking is, I think that even if everyone drove a non polluting car powered by a uranium slug that provided a lifetime of power without refueling we will still need petroleum for other purposes. I want to conserve this for the future until we find viable alternatives for every possible use. Got it?
So, with people driving around their H3s and SUVs getting 8 gallons to the mile that they purchased four years ago when gas was cheap enough until we didn't care, I think the unrest is a good time to allow the seed for alternative fuel ideas to take root. People are willing to talk about something rather than the old standby.
Here are my thoughts on some of the alternatives that being tossed around.
Let's start off with the golden goose. Hydrogen. Everyone loves hydrogen. You put hydrogen gas in one end and out comes water. We have, for all practical purposes, an unlimited supply of water to use as fuel. What's to hate about this? Well, mostly I hate that it keeps getting dangled in front of us every time we start talking about alternatives with a promise of "just you wait. This will be here in 5 years and it will revolutionize everything! You'll see!" So no one follows other lines of research because this is such a sure thing. Hydrogen cars have been five years away for about 15 years now.
The thing is that hydrogen and oxygen produce a lot of energy but making practical use of this is a lot more difficult than just burning something. Current hydrogen cell technology essentially works by allowing hydrogen to bind with oxygen to form water, but it will not allow the electron to cross this barrier and, instead, it has to go the long way through the engine and incidentally provides a power source. As simple as this idea sounds, it requires some very expensive materials and the engines are very fragile and are not hardy to cold temperatures. They tend to break in the cold. There is a reason most hydrogen cars are demonstrated in the desert. No one wants a $300,000 prototype to crack and be ruined because someone can't read a weather report. So, before we see this miracle we first have to figure out how to make these machines work in cold temperatures. We have to figure out how to get the cost down to 25% of their current cost. We have to develop a hydrogen fuel infrastructure. This is not something 5 years away. This is a solution much further down the road than people would like to suggest. Fifteen years is a possibility. But that is 15 years of the current infrastructure becoming more unweidly and gas prices continuing to skyrocket faster than inflation. Sounds like most people will be bankrupt just trying to afford to go to work in such a setup. This is why I would prefer to focus on alternatives that are real and practical today.
Of these that are out there, ethanol gets tossed around as a hope. In South America it is actually already in use and has been for many years. So why can't the USA adopt it? Well, a large part of the problem is that the Northern Hemisphere really doesn't have a good crop that yeilds enough alcohol. Sugar cane is a good crop and Southern countries can grow it and have high yields of alcohol. In the USA we are looking at corn because we really don't have another good crop. Currently it costs about 1.6 gallons of gas for every 1 gallon of ethanol we generate due to transporting corn to the processing plants. Whoops. That means we are wasting fuel. What's more fermentation is actually an inefficient way to create ethanol. Do you know the cheapest and most efficent way to make alcohol? Synethsizing it from petroleum. Current thinking is that if we can figure out a way to ferment all of corn plants rather than just the seeds then maybe it will be efficient enough to replace current infrastructure. Basically, this is going to require someone to either bioengineer some interesting microorganisms, which brings in all sorts of federal agencies to investigate and approve the safety of this by years of testing, or we discover some helpful enzymes. Either way, this is going to be a few years. Don't expect to see that alcohol powered car for a few more years.
Biodiesel is another one that gets a lot of talk. Biodiesel, in my opinion, is a really good idea for right now. This idea will become a problem if it is implemented en mass. Why? Well, since so few people are willing to take the time to make their own fuel, right now you can find people willing to donate their problem (wasted grease) to you for free. It is possible to get a production car going on extremely cheap fuel. If lots of people have biodiesel, then there is a market for wasted oil and grease and it is subject to market demands. Combine that with the fact that biodiesel clouds at low temperature and needs to be mixed with regular diesel, I just don't see this as taking off in a huge way. If it stays fairly low key, it is great for the people willing to work with it. Especially if they purchase one of the aforementioned VW Jetta TurboDiesels. 45 miles per gallon on fuel you made yourself? Yeah, that's workable. But it is going to require a lot of extra work on your part.
A friend of mine are evenly split on the idea of steam powered cars. Yes, you read that right. Steam power. Steam power used to be the high performance standard for cars and gasoline engines were considered slow and clunky. The big thing that hurt steam power was it took so long to build up pressure and gasoline cars could be started instantly. Well, times have changed and there are ways to create flash boilers or maintaining a pressurized system so that a steam car that has no wait is possible. This would be an external combustion engine rather than an internal combustion. The downside is that external combustion engines pollute more. They are only about half as efficient as an internal combustion engine, which even then aren't very efficent, and they do not burn very cleanly. The advantage is that they will burn anything. You can easily set it up to run off solid, liquid, or gas power. You could slap in a propane tank, fire it up, and drive until you run out and then load it up on grass clippings and newspaper. My friend thinks that the versitility of steam is going to make it more attractive in the upcoming years. While I agree there will probably be a market for it in that it is almost impossible to ever run out of fuel, I have my doubts that it will really take off because there is very little incentive for deep pockets to back it.
Currently oil companies are about the most profitable companies in the world. They have a solid monopoly out there on fuel. Why support development of a car that burns anything and everything? Who is going to profit from this? The manufacturer of the car, a few parts dealers, but that's mostly it. Everyone else is going to have erratic gains. Someone may fuel theirs up with vegetable oil while someone else is shoveling coal. It distributes wealth all over the place depending on what is available and, while that is nice, no one walks away with the big check. Plus, they pollute more.
I predict a small market.
It possibly may surprise some people that as much as I do not like gas-electric cars I am fully supportive of electric cars in of themselves. This is a definite place where my father and I disagree. He feels electric is stupid in that it is not very portable and there is no getting around battery costs. I agree. But the thing is that it is a $6k every 5 to 10 years versus $200+ every years in regular mechanical maintenance plus the cost of batteries. I think having expenses in one huge lump rather than distributed out over the years works out the same. Electric engines require almost no maintenance and are extremely efficient. Both of which I think are good selling points. Batteries also don't fail all at once. There will just be a decline in its ability to hold a charge and you can plan ahead to some extent. Which is a little different than, say, having the head gasket blow while you are on a road trip which is something we currently have to risk.
Right now most electric vehicles are classified as NEVs or Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. They have a very limited range, typically 30 miles or less, and are limited to speeds under 35 mph. This is fine for in city use for most driving people do. Anything with a range of 50 miles will cover the needs of most commuters 90% of the time. Is this ideal? No, not really. I think for electric to really take off they need a range of roughly 100 miles at speeds up to 50 mph. I think 50 mph most people will tolerate and it should be fast enough until it is not too vexing. I also think that after about two hours most people are fine with taking a break. From there we need to add facilities at regular gas stations that allow rapid charging. If people can drive two hours and then take off again after 20 minutes I think there will be a market for these cars. Particularly if they can be shown to be a cheaper alternative.
Right now there are a range of electric vehicles. At the high end we have the Telsa Roadster which is a sports car that can do 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds and can go 220 miles to one charge. All for $109,000. At the low end we have the Zap that is currently working on this problem from the other end. Sell low end cars and work up.
If it takes off, I think XP Vehicles may find an interesting market niche with their idea of inflatable cars. It's a bit difficult to digest, but if it works then it should keep the costs low enough that people may buy it as a second car. You have your gas guzzling car for big trips and, for an extra $5k you can have the electric inflatable you use for around town.
Personally two vehicles I think would do very well over on this side of the Atlantic if they established a larger US presence are the Twike and the similar but smaller Aerorider. These are human-electric hybrids. That is to say they are electic vehicles with pedaling as an assist.
The idea probably won't catch on except for the environmentally concious or people obsessed with health, but I still feel it is a good idea and with lots of potential. If rowing is more your style, then perhaps a Human Car is more your speed-and I mean speed literally. The prototype is entirely human powered and has obtained speeds over 60 mph. Impressive in that is pure human muscle.
To sum up, if you are thinking about alternatives to your old gas guzzler there are quite a few alternative out there being tossed around each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Will any of them entirely replace the gasoline car? No, not likely or at least not for the next few years. While a lot of people talk about gas-electric hybrids as if they are the next big thing I would advise everyone to hold back just a little while longer and wait for the other shoe to drop. The time when the first few hybrids batteries are starting to fail should be coming around soon and you may want to wait to see what public opinion is by then. My advice if you just want to conserve fuel but use an existing standard is not to look to the future but, rather, look to to the past. Diesel cars and economy gasoline cars from bygone years actually had surprising gas mileages. If you do choose diesel this also opens up an opprotunity to try to make your own fuel for close to nothing for summer months and you can mix it in a 50/50 ratio during the winter. If you must buy a hybrid to feel green, I would suggest something other than electric. Hydraulic and steam both look promising.
Although I have my reservations about gasoline and electric, I do generally feel electric is possibly the potential wave of the future. Especially if mass transit improves then a neighborhood vehicle may be what most people need. In Europe there is a suggestion for creating stands to rent electric cars in some areas so that rather than owning a car people just pay for them as needed.
Under the subset of electric vehicles, I am actually fairly impressed with human-hybrid electrics. Not that they are any more practical, but it gives a commuter a chance to feel like they are doing something healthy other than just sitting idly in a traffic jam. This is also handy for people who may like the idea of biking to work but live too far from where they work for this to be practical.