Everything is going to change

At present, cars are grossly out of place with our future. Our future is one of empty underground oil wells, and years of soaring petrol and diesel prices. That is of course, unless we grow to accept a few fundamental changes to cars, the most apparent of these is the loss of the combustion engine.

Question is, what's going to replace that gaping hole in your engine bay? Every car manufacturer seems to have the answer, but how come they all have a different approach to solving this problem? Toyota was adamant that their Prius was the answer, but to me, a hybrid is just a stop gap to buy more time for Toyota to develop a proper 0 CO2 emission car. Honda on the other hand has taken their search for the clean emissions car of the future in a totally different direction indeed. They're using the most abundant gas in the world, hydrogen, to propel the FCX Clarity, and what's the emissions created? Water. Yep, no evil nasty gasses that'll kill the poor squirrels,and this is probably the future of cars for us. But not yet, oh no. like all things in life, there's a catch.

Hydrogen may be very common, but it loves to pair up with other atoms to form molecules. It's very hard to separate it into it's normal state. So, we need to use huge amounts of energy to pry Hydrogen atoms away from oxygen atoms to get to the hydrogen. So, for the moment at least, hydrogen cars are more wasteful than normal cars. When the hydrogen extraction process is made less energy demanding, then it will no doubt be the next form of car propulsion.

My favourite idea is a bit like what Tesla, the electric Roadster company has in mind. The cars they build are totally electric, and can be charged through the mains. I believe the way to get a truly 0 CO2 emissions car is to charge cars like this using energy produced by wind turbines or hydroelectric stations.

Roman