TheAlbatross Posted:

Like i said….i dont know much. Just wondering what would be the best bet. Looked up a little and personally i think hydrogen would be a great long term solution. Its just too expensive right now.

Hydrogen won’t work. Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is a means to store energy. In other words, we will buy oil to burn to make the hydrogen in the first place. But hey- your CAR won’t be polluting, just the factories that make the hydrogen.

However a flex- fuel vehicle can burn gasoline, ethanol or methanol for only about 100-200 added to the sticker price. Ethanol is also a bad choice in the long run, because it cuts into our food supplies thus is only good as a short term option. Methanol, on the other hand is a sustainable long term fix. Cheap and easy to manufacture- see the quote below:

“This brings us to methanol, the simplest liquid fuel molecule known to chemistry. Commonly called “wood alcohol” because it can be readily produced from wood, it can also be manufactured out of virtually any kind of organic material, including every kind of biombum (whether edible or not), as well as coal, natural gas, human and animal metabolic wastes, and municipal trash. Since its potential sources are so vast, varied, and cheap, methanol promises to be an inexpensive fuel. In fact, it already is: during the summer of 2007, the wholesale price of methanol, manufactured and sold without a subsidy, was $0.93 per gallon. Methanol has about 54 percent the energy density of gasoline, so this price is the equivalent of gasoline selling for $1.70 per gallon (before taxes).”

(taken from http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/18/zubrin.htm)

The problem is making it available in gas stations- that would require lots of cars that can use it so people would buy it. Which probably won’t ever happen because that would require a government mandate, and both parties in our government are in the pocket of Big Oil, not to mention the automakers.