[Number 3]

This is a cool thread.

Technical AND political at the same time.

Remember, cheap is what really drives this topic. Right now, oild from the Middle East, North Sea, Mexico, Alaska is CHEAP. I call it "Jed Clampet" oil. Stick a straw in the ground and up comes crude. Yes, it is not cheap to build drilling rigs especially out in the ocean, but once you've done that you get CHEAP oil. It only takes a little bit of refining to get kerosene (jef fuel), diesel and gasoline.

Next up are the tar sands oil like up in Canada. Huge deposits, but it requires more refining and is thus more expensive.

Third up is shale oil. Not currently commercially viable, but yet another level of refining required making it even more expensive.

Now one could surmise that if the ultimate goal were to be "self sufficient" I might be putting some money into companies that want to convert shale oil into fuel. We (the U.S.) have more shale oil to convert to oil than all the known reserves. Or so I read several years ago. But that would be asking the American people to PAY MORE. And they won't..............they'll scream bloody murder just like they do any time any additional gas taxes are proposed.

Ethanol can be had today, corn based as mentioned. It is even subsidized and GM has over 5 million vehicles on the road that can run on it. Also note that Toyota is complaining that if E85 is mandated it will cost them an additional 3 to 400 dollars per car. GM has already done this on a wide range of products. Look at Brasil. They have sugar based ethanol and they even run on E100. Sugar ethanol is far cleaner burning than corn based ethanol too. But when Brasil wanted to import sugar based ethanol...................we told them no. Probably due to the price of corn for our farmers going down as a result. Hence politics.

Compressed Natural Gas. T. Boone Pickens wants us all to run on CNG. It is plentiful, cheap and U.S. made. Problem is that you can't pressurize a CNG tank to 3,00o psi very well. It takes as long to use the home unit to fill your car as it does to recharge an EV. About 12 to 14 hours. And that home unit is about $3,000 from Honda if I remember correctly. GM has offered trucks that run on CNG and Taxis in Korea mandate CNG. So that is viable as well, but I just don't know how to fill up your car at a local 7-11/gas station in the 5 minutes it takes today.

And like ethanol, and EVs and Hydrogen (another story all together) it requires huge infrastructure changes.

Battery power - hybrids, EVs, REEVs (Volt), Fuel Cells all require batteries to store the energy. We are at the infancy of chemical energy storage. LiION is the current technology and there are a few more promising ones on the horizon. But in a tiny car that you can maybe use for limited ranges, you MIGHT get 100 miles. And again in a small car with light loads. That doesn't work for people that actually need a Full Size Truck or Van for business. Or those that need to haul a trailer or carry 6 kids or drive 1,200 mile to Florida on vacation. And these batteries are VERY expensive. And when they fail, where do they go? Today, recycling of LiION batteries is a losing proposition.

So end of the day, gasoline is the cheapest, easiest to move of ANY alternate source. So we are back to CHEAP again. There are only two ways then to supplant the current status quo............make one of the alternatives more reliable, cheaper and match the ease of energy storage as gasoline............or mandate the change to one of the more expensive alternatives.

In time, one of the alternatives may stand out, in time what is cheap oil may become more expensive. But I believe, without data, that OPEC will never let oil rise so high that the other alternatives do become cheaper. At least no for very long.

Keep in mind, gas and diesel are $8 to $10 per gallon in parts of the world. And they haven't jumped on board any of these alternatives either. Of course the socio-economic model in Europe that taxes the crap out of fuel will have to change once you can buy a car with a battery and charge it at home. The tax man commeth.

In an interview with the head of GM powertrain, he was very clear that IC engine will be here for a lonnngggggg time to come. The fuels may come from alternate sources than today, but the ability to transport and store that energy is still the cheapest and most efficient way to go. And the IC engine will run on many of the alternate fuels. Hydrogen (BMW), CNG (many examples), Ethanol (many of the GM, Ford and Chrysler products) in anywhere from E20 to E100.