Fiat Turns to Natural Gas for U.S. as Toyota, GM Go Electric - Bloomberg
Seems a better bet to me than electric. No?

 

It absolutely does. Electric cars are great on a small scale and short trips...but if you want to look to the future I don't think it will be electric. Americans want a car powered by a fuel. It's going to get old dragging out the old electric cord to the car every night. CNG is in such an abundance. If we could keep both CNG and gasoline there would be 2 different fuels we could run on...and the market would gravitate towards the cheapest fuel. Even propane which is similar to CNG would work well. Only problem is that it may drive up heating costs...but everyone driving an electric car would drive up electricity costs as well. Also, CNG and propane burn much cleaner than gasoline...so automotive emissions systems could be simplified.

Hybrids also seem like a temporary solution to a problem. To me, they have the drawbacks of electrics and the drawbacks of a gas car rolled into one. Imagine having the battery pack go bad AND the engine. Too overly complicated to be basic transportation. Electrics are supposed to be simple to maintain. Drop a gas engine in and that all goes away.

I think ultimately we may some day be able to put water in our car, have some type of electrolysis machine that converts water to hydrogen gas and oxygen, and then we can burn that hydrodgen. But that won't be for a while. Or perhaps we would be able to just fill up with hydrogen.

One thing I'm sure of...we need to stop using corn to make ethanol and diluting our gasoline...and forget this E85 stuff. Corn is part of our food supply...using it to fuel our cars is a big mistake.

 

Well said. Couldn`t agree more on the ethanol.

 

Chevrolet Volt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As much as I hate, hate , hate and did I say HATE General Motors, I think they are on to something with the Volt. I believe this is the beginning but I think it will get better.

The $40K starting price is out of many folks prices range and quite frankly is a ridiculous price to ask.

I think they could have increased the EPA rating better if they had used a diesel generator instead of a gasser.

Additionally, why doesn't this car have a solar panel on it? GM and all car makers striving for alternative fuels should strive to use all opportunities to recharge a battery.

In my mind, we don't have a satisfactory infrastructure to accommodate CNG.

The electrolysis technology to make o2 from water or seawater has been used on submarines for decades.