The Car of the Future

I suspect we may be surprised regarding fuel prices -- and not in a nice way.

I doubt our supplier "friends" abroad will miss a chance to run up the dollar signs at the pump.

For that matter, we Americans have gotten off on the cheap for decades, and I wonder how much longer that can last. I live in a foreign country where a gallon of unleaded premium costs on the order of 20-fold as much, compared to average monthly incomes, than it does in the U.S.

I also think (read: hope) that alternatives such as reasonably efficient batteries will come to the fore much sooner than we now suspect. There are countless bright folks out there right now looking to make a buck with one eye and looking at the technological possibilities with the other eye.

Smaller vehicles? Sure, with some, though Americans are likely to be among the most resistant to downsizing. My Sister, for instance, insists on her SUV, though her husband rarely rides with her and their kids are grown and gone from home. But she drives to her job, about 15-16 miles, round-trip, daily, in a vehicle designed to spaciously seat 8 or 9, less spaciously to handle another passenger or two -- and, in a pinch, to carry north of a dozen. Average-sized adults, I mean, not a bunch of kiddies.

Even my aging Mom, who virtually never even drives her car (let alone have passengers) insists on keeping her decade-old Cadillac best compared to an aircraft carrier.

Me? I LOVE driving -- but haven't done so in 15 years, as I live in a major foreign metropolis with excellent public transportation options, including taxis, motorcycle taxis, a decent subway system, and an elevated train. And the later two are expanding apace. I can get practically anywhere I might wish to go, in the metropolis anyway, by one of these means -- cheaply. Were I to buy a car, I likely, as a single guy with no dependents, opt for something like a Smart-For-2 or Mini-Cooper. Heck, if the government here ever were to put in true bicycle lanes, I'd go back to riding a bike, as I did for years in China. Loved it, and improved my health.

I'm from car-crazed Texas, but even there, people are beginning to cotton to the idea of meaningful mass transit -- not just a single bus on sparse routes every hour or two, but light rail and the like. And if fuel prices do indeed rise, as I'm inclined to believe they will somewhere down the line, interest in alternatives will climb right along with those prices.

Budddy Chrysler And GM are gonna Make The pErfect Plug In Vehical Ever!1 Toyota and Nissan Are trying to Follow our Foot Steps and now they want GM to Build Toyota a Deisal Truck and Dodge To make Nissian a Truck!! I TOLD SOOO MANY OF YOU PPL OUT THERE THAT AZN IMPORTS ARE GONNA BEG FOR DOMESTICS TO HELP THEM WITH SELLS!!! CHRYSLER IS COMING BACK ***!! JUST WAIT! ALL U PRICKS ARE RELYING ON UR 2010 MODELS WHICH CHRYSLER IS STILL RELYING ON THEIR 08 MODELS!! JUST IMAGIN WHEN WE COMOUT WITH OUR NEW 2010 -2011 MODELS!! BUDDY WELL BE LIKE HOW WERE IN 05-08 ! WE DOMINATED SELLS IN THOSE YEARS!! JUST WAIT SMALL D*#K AZN CARS....DOMESTICS BEAT U ONCE WE CAN BEAT U AGAIN!! PERIOD!!

No body can build a efficient vehicle, because the supply makers don't have the right tools yet when this happen this suppose to be global we just going to the wrong direction think about it we not even have tech people to repair these vehicles all this is just another catastropic event from the auto maker's and this new administration we all just going to another adventure of this life !.........thank's for listening...

This is a poorly researched 'fluff' article. Hydrogen is not a 'renewable fuel' - you have to make it from something else and that takes energy. Today hydrogen is made by reforming natural gas. Do some research and read the book 'The Hype About Hydrogen' before hyping hydrogen as the fuel of the future. And diesel are loud, cranky, unreliable? Again do your research - in Europe today you will find that 50% of the cars on the road are diesels - and these are clean, efficient, and fun to drive.

We have far too many vehichles on this planet already. Something has got to be regulated.
How many deaths, injuries will we continue to overlook?
How much more will we spend on roads, maintenace,police surveillance and medical bills to support the car culture?

Our country is going to hell in a handbasket. The high cost of fuel has driven up the production and shipping cost of everything. Consumers have nothing left over after filling the tank and paying more for the necessities of life to spend on extras, save or invest. We need to get ourselves out from under our dpendency on foriegn oil.Just as gas prices start to fall slightly and we felt like there might be hope along comes Ike and causes them to spike to an all time high. Families everywhere are wondering where else they can cut back to cover the cost of fueling up the family vehicle to get back and forth to work and take care of the necessities of life. There is no money left for relaxation and family fun. The stress level continues to rise. Most areas of the country have seen a sharp rise in their electric bill as power companies pass their increased production costs on to consumers. The price of a gallon of milk is almost as precious as a gallon of gas. The cost of every consumer product has risen sharply. Americans are stretched to the limit. Jobs are being lost, foreclosures are increasing at an alarming rate. Seems even the family pets are suffering the high cost of fuel as almost daily a sad new story is on TV about shelters being forced to euthanize record number of surrendered pets from those forced out of their homes due to foreclosure or they simply can't afford to feed them anymore. The energy crisis in our country is far reaching and needs immediate attention. Our economy is in a sorry state of affairs directly related to the high cost of fuel. We have become so dependant on foreign oil that we have neglected to fully utilize such natural sources of energy such wind power & solar power. Along with modern technology such as plug in cars, hybrid cars, v2g technology ,and regenerative braking, technology we still seem to be floundering as a nation as to devising the best plan utilize all that is available to us and lift ourselves out of this mess we are in. We need to take o ur closest look at which candidates put our economy and energy crisis at the forefront of their agenda. The Manhattan Project of 2009 by Jeff Wilson

What a joke! America is getting screwed and no one is complaining. The only reason we do not have fuel cell cars, and other break through technology, coming at a fast pace is OIL is GOLD, Period! The middel East countries and American Big Oil Co's will, or are already, buying up any technology they can to sloooooooow down the replacement of oil in the world. It is about dollars! Wealth! Wake up America before it is too late.

It is not an "energy" issue. It is a transportation issue: Moving people and goods from one place to another.

Imported oil is used as fuel for the internal combustion engine.

Brazil took the hint from the Jimmy Carter speech of July 15, 1979 (google it) and is today totally independent of imported oil--using many flex fuel vehicles manufactured by Ford!

Alternative renewable fuel sources can be developed in many countries besides Brazil--if major commitments by the governments are made and persisted in as prices fluctuate and technologies are developed.

Persistance is the key word. Cheap imported oil got us hooked before. Cheap imported ethanol or hydrogen or whatever could get us hooked on imported fuels again.

The alternative renewable fuels must be developed and maintained at home to be successful in making us independent of TRANSPORTATION fuels.

We have adequate "energy". It is self sufficient fuels for the internal combusion engine that we need.

In the meantime, conservation is the one thing individuals can do. It worked during WWII. It is working to some extent now as working class Americans and businesses feel the pinch of $4 a gallon gasoline. It ha already decreased demand and prices at the pump (as well as crude on the futures market) are falling. But the mistake often made in the past is to go back to our old ways when the price drops temporarily--and remain "adicted" as the president said.

And Solar, solar, solar......................

Hydrogen, Hydrogen, Hydrogen, what more to say?

For a moment when I saw the heading "CAR OF THE FUTURE" I was looking for a FLINTSONE VERSION to pop up on the screen.

The car looks nice, would be nicer if the price was lower.

I like Nims comment. Why aren't we paying more attention to algae. From algae, we could get hydrogen and according to the October 2007 issue of National Geographic, we can distill algae into clean burning biofuel that can fit into the current fuel insfrastructure. We can also use exhausts from coal burning power plants to produce algae.

The last edition of Newsweek also contained an article on capturing carbon dioxide to produce fuel-producing bacteria. I might add that we desperately need to develop a way of capturing methane from the atmosphere. The methane content of the atmosphere is increasing and that's even more dangerous that carbon dioxide. Many buses in the La Metro fleet already run on natural gas, and natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel that coal or gasoline.

The bottom line is that we have alternatives to oil. We need to develop them. The country that will emerge as the dominant power in the 21st century (provided the planet survives.) will the the nation that de-carbonizes its economy. With responsible leadership, like a TeamObama, (with an emphasis on teammanship) I'd far sooner see America emerge as a dominant power than China, India or Russia - all three of these countries have proven to be far less responsible than the United States. We need to get our act together.

Readers, be informed, and beware! Sam Bodman, US Energy Secretary, is a Bush appointed Yes-man. Bodman states that insufficient production is making oil prices soar. Bush wants you to think that the OPEC countries are responsible for high oil prices, but the truth is, OPEC has been significantly increasing production over the past several months. Where is all that oil going? It's being stockpiled by US investment banks, who are creating a fake shortage to drive up the price. Congress has already started to investigate this criminal practice. Bush, who has deregulated the banking industry, tries to blame it on OPEC. By now you should be familiar with Bush's MO: he says you should be very afraid of Muslims. But who you should really be afraid of are investment bankers at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Check this out:

Michael Masters of Master Capital Management (a global investment manager) testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs a couple of weeks ago. Quotes from his testimony:

"Today, Index Speculators are pouring billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, speculating that commodity prices will increase. In the popular press the explanation given for rising oil prices is the increased demand from China. According to the DOE, China's demand for petroleum has increased in the last five years from 1.88 billion barrels to 2.8 billion barrels, an increase of 920 billion barrels. Over the same five year period, Index Speculators' demand for petroleum futures has increased by 848 million barrels. THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM INDEX SPECULATORS IS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM CHINA. Index Speculators have now stockpiled, via the futures market, the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of petroleum, effectively adding EIGHT TIMES as much oil to their own stockpile as the US Government has added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last five years."

"The Senate has asked the question "Are Institutional Investors contributing to food and energy price inflation?" And my unequivocal answer is "YES." In this testimony I will explain that investment banks are one of, if not the primary, factors affecting commodities prices today. Clearly, there are many factors that contribute to price determination in the commodities markets; I am here to expose a fast-growing yet virtually unnoticed factor, and one that presents a problem that can be expediently corrected through legislative policy action..."

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They're supposed to be protecting us from these kinds of abuses, but Bush allowed loopholes in the CFTC regulations that you can drive a truck through. An oil truck, that is.

Links to Masters' Senate testimony, and 2 articles:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
http://globalresearch.ca

Car enthusiasts should be thrilled. This is the most exciting variety of emerging auto technologies since a century ago, when people were first dabbling with gasoline, deisel, steam, and electric cars. Then the industry mostly collapsed down to gasoline engines (with diesel on the side). Fun stuff. My vote goes to the Chevy Volt. Grid electricity creates less pollution that a comparable amount of energy creatd by a million little hybrid engines. Plus, the off-the-line will crush a hybrid with a small battery and dual power train. You only have to fall back on the on-board engine once you've gone more than 40 miles, which most people do not do on an average day. Hey GM, why not make that recharging engine a natural gas or LP engine for even better emmissions quality?

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!
Hydrogen has to be made. You can't just take it out of the atmosphere without using energy. The machines that make hydrogen run on electricity and the vast majority of electricity production comes from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, the vast majority of man-made pollution in the world comes from power plants which burn fossil fuels. So until we use nuclear, wind, solar and geothermal as our primary energy sources, all we're doing is sending the pollution up the production ladder.