Like originally of the 19th century; politics, economics and environmentalism are all coming collectively to say that like horse powered carriages, petroleum as the supply of our transportation needs is on its last legs. Politically petroleum has too many drawbacks including its assist of terrorism. Economically whether or not as a result of falling dollar or the political query, petroleum is pricing itself out of the equation. And eventually environmentally as one of the key causes of inexperienced house gases and local weather change, petroleum is no longer sustainable. Not to mention the finite nature of its availability.

Putting their proverbial toe in the water, the automotive industry has given us a couple of hybrid petroleum fuel and electric options together with the Toyota Prius and the Honda Perception. Authorities ethanol subsidies have allowed huge redeployment of corn, soy and other meals sources to be diverted in direction of the production of bio-fuels that may be utilized in should improved diesel know-how automobiles. Nations comparable to Argentina have began switching their government and private fleets to pure fuel powered vehicles.

But even more choices are coming down the street. Coal based mostly electric powered automobiles till recently no higher environmentally then their petroleum powered counterparts at the moment are seeing electricity from renewable sources equivalent to wind energy and solar energy. Bio-diesel or bio-fuels as they are actually being referred to as are additionally evolving. India is changing into a energy house in jatropha bio-diesel fuel. Jatropha, a native of Central America and Mexico, does not compete with food sources for soil or mouths. As well as, there are exciting new developments in algae based mostly bio-fuels initially studied at the College of new Hampshire again in the 1970’s. Just recently Honda announced the phase 1 lease take a look at of the Honda FCX Readability a hydrogen gas cell powered vehicle. Though not quite yet able to go mainstream, hydrogen does not emit inexperienced-home gases, has a better range than electric energy and might be refueled faster than a battery could be charged.

So which expertise am I betting on. The reality is that we’ll most likely see a patchwork of solutions evolving because the market is actually big sufficient to support a number of of them concurrently. As well as as totally different political, environmental and financial pressures make themselves felt, the feasibility of a few of this options will improve or decrease. So higher than asking which am I betting on I might focus extra on which would I prefer to see take off. From all standpoints, what makes me saddest is the development to stay with the identical present system of centralized production services with the required distribution network to convey it out to the user. In a petroleum based mostly system, I perceive that provided that petroleum is only found in sure areas of the world, the system needed to be a system of centralized production and refinery with a distribution network to get the product out to the ultimate consumer. I’d hope that the solutions that evolve take into consideration the amount of vitality it takes for this complete distribution network. So I would prefer to see options such as the Honda Residence Vitality station which although nonetheless powered by natural gas do much of the work proper in the house. The actual purpose needs to be a algae, photo voltaic or different renewable powered dwelling energy station that fees your automobile battery or produces bio-gasoline proper in your home without a need to have a third celebration to swap out and/or recharge your battery. However there are nonetheless many issues to be solved particularly for renewable electricity the storage side. But nonetheless that is what I might like us to be aiming for.

So which technology do you think will win this race? Electric, solar, bio-diesel, pure gasoline, hydrogen? Which know-how would you prefer to win this race?