Can someone please explain to me...If we currently have the technology to run cars and buses with Natural Gas - why couldn't we use Hydrogen Gas instead to power the same vehicles ? Can't we design a vehicle that produces Hydrogen on demand ? We could use the alternator to power the Electrolyser to create the gas. Instead of a gas tank, all we would need is a small tank of water...?

Hold on gday, we don't use algae from the sea, we can grow it in endless supply from small samples in vast ponds on non-arable land, desert, for that matter, and even use waste water that sequesters CO2 from coal-fired power plants for algae food. Remember, algae is a plant, eating CO2 and pooping out oxygen. Good trade. 

Corn as an agri-fuel (ethanol) can be harvested maybe twice per season and requires vast tracts of  food-allocated arable land. Algae can be harvested every three to four days . . . from a scum pond . . . in  the desert! An acre of corn might produce something akin to a gallon of fuel. An acre of algae can produce somewheres round 15 gallons . . . and did I mentioned it can be harvested every three to fours days . . .  from the desert!? And algae fuel, being a biodeisel, produces a teensy carbon footprint when compared to standard fossil fuel. This is clearly the way we will, eventually go. 

Don't get me wrong, techno-toys and transitional technologies are fun and essential to innovation. Hey, I drive a Prius! But, there's no need to re-invent this particular wheel. With only slight adjustments, you can put algae-derived fuel into the car you drive today. To-Day! Today. The only reason you don't is due to vested interest by government and corporations that must play out (by whatever means, dwindling supply or, well, dwindling supply) before transitioning. The transition will come. It is inevitable. And though it may not be pretty, it will happen.

But in the meantime know this, all of your sea buddies are perfectly safe. No whales will be harmed in the making of your next viable and sustainable fuel source.

The biggest problem is not the source of energy but storing it. For electric cars, that means the batteries are not good enough to replace gas.

I don't care, as long as they fly.

What's up with Bush's hydrogen car?

Gotta be the twin turbine jag

Is anyone working on the steam car? like the stanley steamer? Is it possable?

We can't store electricity so I propose that some of our new wind and solar power plants produce something that can be stored, hydrogen. If we could make hydrogen (by electro-chemically breaking down water), hydrogen powered vehicles could ply the highways, with their only emission being water vapor. Additionally, wind and solar power plants are very difficult to insert onto the electric grid due to their uneven source of energy. Why not embrace the unevenness of these energy sources to make something that doesn't need to be synchronized to the grid, but could be enormously useful.

Yes! A natural gas fired, or propane fired steam car is very possible. I bet somebody out there is working on a modern steam car design. IF NOT THEY SHOULD BE.

 the fabulous furry freak brothers had a idea to use the gas from the beans from dinner the only problem there was the epa gagged on it.....

Unless the oil companies can own or control it, it won't happen. You forget the tremendous power of greed and the tremendous power that money got by greed provides.

Gas from algae is possible, and it can be done in compact scale. It's quieted down lately, hasn't it?

Threats? Payoffs?

A hybrid hydrogen/sterling/li-ion vehicle is perhaps the easiest transition from gasoline. The Li-ion battery for the first 5 miles of travel and as a booster. The Hydrogen (for heat)/sterling engine for continuous electrical generation. All the parts are already in mass production....... FYI the sterling engine also produces free Air Conditioning....

I like the idea of both electric and hydrogen driven cars, but a clean source of hydrogen or electricity is needed. I feel that cold fusion would really be the solution to the problem. Cold fusion is really a misnomer. The energies being liberated in such experiments are not from fusion per say. The energy is actually zero point energy being liberated by creating interference and beet energies from zero point jitters through the manipulation of hydrogen nuclei. Such devices can liberate energy from the quantum field at a ratio of 25:1 out put to input. Such a revise can be used on a small scale to run a vehicle or a home. Decentralization would mean no distribution problems. All of this is possible with today's technology. We will all see this soon if the energy giants don't kill it before it gets of the ground.

Wouldn't electric cars be pretty cool? I think with the rate that the prices of gas are rising, electric cars will pretty much be cheaper than gas powered cars in the near future. I hear gas could rise to over $4.00 a gallon by memorial day! How crazy is this? I remember when gas was $.99 a gallon.

 Until you can get a electric vehicle to go 400 to 500 miles on a charge. You will not see significant amounts of buyers for them. People don't want to drive 50 miles and have to charge their car. Can you imagine if we had to do that with a gasoline vehicle?

Stop screwing around and build nuclear power plants. The only people whose first priority is CO2 emissions are people who can afford to be environmentally freindly. There is not enough arable land in the world to feed the population on organically grown food now much less 10 or 20 years from now. Stop subsidizing corn for ethanol (using fossil fuel fertilizers and fossil fuel tractors). Windmills kill bats and are ugly, photocells are fine but don't work in the dark. Mr. J. Q. public generally doesn't care if his car runs on bald eagles as long as it is cheap enough. The French have made nuclear power work! The French! Does that tell you anything?

First Idea: I remember reading that they were proposing to deploy Solar array fields on the order of a couple of hundred acres at a whack up in space and then collecting the energy and beaming it down to Earth in the form of microwaves. The microwaves would then be converted to electricity for the energy grid. Why not build a car that has its own microwave converter on board that converts the energy when needed or even stores it in the batteries when you don't need it? Of course, you would have to essentially blanket the enter country with microwaves, but if I am not mistaken, aren't we already being bombarded with microwaves everyday anyway? What's the difference? Why not a combination of microwave and Solar energy being converted simultaneously on the vehicle? I am just thinking out loud, I am not an electrician, nor a physicist, nor a rocket scientist. I just see things a little differently from what was previously reported and think of other ways this technology could be manipulated to serve a different challenge...

Second idea: Take idea #1 and instead focus it to strategic locations around the country that 'injects' the electricity into the power grid.The additional energy can then be laced into powerlines under the roads and highways that as the cars drive over them collect the electricity much like my rechargeable cordless toothbrush gets recharged while it sits in its cradle...That way as they drive, the cars will call for power service as necessary and if there is an abundance, it can store the electricity in its batteries...

Third idea: Additionally, as the demand for power drops at night, you can store the electricity in offsite batteries in close proximity to the streets, say inside the Jersey barriers. you can place high-capacity batteries in each of the barriers and when the day progresses and more cars get on the streets they can drain each of the batteries as necessary until cars get off the road...Those streets that have no traffic can be 'shutdown' as necessary and divert their power reserves to areas that do need it - like the major cities...This would create a revitalization of our National infrastructure that would creat jobs and a whole new 'electric' economy...If the electric fields were too strong of radiation (and the term 'radiation' is a relative term- we are not talking about Incredible Hulk radiation here), I believe the engineers that manufacture the cars can come up with relative cheap shielding to protect the passengers; whether it be simple materials acting as the shield, or an electric/magnetic field to create the shielding...

Just a couple of thoughts...Bottomline- I think the common denominator is having an array of Solar panels up in space that can collect the electricity 24hrs a day rain or shine...The Solar array farms in space would create a new market for our commercial rocketeers to go up and service them from time to time as well...Or just deploy more arrays...

Imagine, an all-electric economy...The only oil you would need is to make plastics and other sundries but at least we would be off the oil economy that the Middle East has been holding us hostage for so long for our auto industry... and it is clean renewable energy...

Trust me- in time, the big oil companies would either switch to this new economy or die on the vine...I am thinking the first option is what's going to keep them afloat...Especially if there is money to be made...

There's my two cents even if no one asked... :-P

Go ALGAE! Its simply a fermentation process = combustable fuel that can be used in more traditional engines.

The sooner we get away from massive gasoline consumption, the sooner problems in the middle east will fade back into the desert oblivion that they came from. It's only via oil dollars that the world even knows these mullahs exist, and when the time comes to sever our connections, and their economies fade, the west will remember the hell they put everyone through and how they refused integration with the rest of the civilized world. What goes around comes around

Why not have all three? Getting rid of gasoline fueled vehicles will not impact the gasoline driven sector that much. The only vehicles that will be replaced would be the POV's. Im not certain if biofuels will be able to compete with the 18 wheeler's that need alot a combustion to haul the load.

Regardless the new engines will create jobs.

Butanol can be produced easily from any plant waste and can directly replace gasoline in any car without modification. It's a no brainer. An instant cure for oil dependency. 

Butanol can be produced easily from any plant waste and can directly replace gasoline in any car without modification. It's a no brainer. An instant cure for oil dependency.

The vast billions wasted per month for the past nine years on the idiot Bush-now-Obama wars in the Middle East would go a long way toward development of alternate energy and fuels. But, obviously, big money can only be spent on useless death and destruction in foreign lands. Funding huge profits for the military-industrial complex is more important evidently than solving serious energy problems. Guess it will take 10 dollar gas to start changing the current stupidity on energy. And 10 dollar gas is indeed on the way.

testing

What we need is a combination plug-in electric / wind-powered vehicle. Charge the battery overnight in the garage, then keep it topped off while driving by harnessing the power of the wind generated by the vehicle. I don't know what the wind "turbine" would look like or how it would function, but shouldn't it be possible to gain some advantage in range and cost savings by implementing something like this? It could allow the use of a lower-capacity and thus less expensive battery, reducing the price of the vehicle and keeping it more competitive with petrol-fueled vehicles.

All great ideas. We should try them all. Don't worry about where to get the money. Just print it up. Only the economists are against this idea, and what do they know? If they knew anything we wouldn't be in this financial mess.

Now that that's out of the way, here's my idea. All electric cars with quick change batteries for long trips and plug ins in all parking lots and garages for daily commutes, shopping trips etc. Also lighter weight cars that are just as sturdy (see Rocky Mountain Institute's "Hypercar") and more electric bullet trains and municipal transportation systems.

Electricity comes from nuclear and coal. Nuclear is safe. There have only been a few deaths, all at Chernobyl. Storage of wastes is not a problem. Only environmental hysterics and politicians think it is (and what do the politicians know?). Read Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline" or James Lovelock's "The Vanishing Face of Gaia".

Coal is not exactly safe, but it could be much safer if government regulators would do their job. All coal fired generating plants should be integrated combined cycle gasification systems with algal bioreactor carbon capture and storage for biochar production to achieve near zero CO2 emissions. The biochar could be stored to remediate the damage caused by mountain top removal coal mining.

Eventually we could have all wind and solar buffered without storage by water hydroelectric and a world wide high voltage direct current energy grid. Some Stanford university professors figured this all out, even to the amount of rare earth elements needed and available, but I can't find the link to their paper. You can google or wiki all these ideas. That's my two bits worth.