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I think bio-diesel will be the big thing. It's already been shown to work, there are already distribution centers for it and the technology is already in existence. They're getting better at using waste material instead of food stocks, and it's certainly plentiful. Cars will soon be running on grass.

The oil companies won't let that be done. This goes all the way back to Rockefeller, when he had alcohol banned because Ford wanted to use it in the Model T.

What is bio-diesel exactly? I've never heard of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

I have a friend who converted his car over to running on the grease from restaurants basically. That's the sort of thing you're looking at here, powering off of food/human waste products or other biological fuels.

Hybrids are gas powered. At least partially.

Basically it's making diesel fuel out of plant material. It's easy to do from high glucose stuff like sugar cane and corn. high energy food to fuel. But now they've learned to make it from much less energy rich plant material like the corn stalk instead of the cob. So instead of growing food for fuel, they can just use the left over parts to make it. And they've also learned to make it from grasses and other plant material. Basically plants are really super efficient colar collectors as is. So they're taking their energy, stored in the materials of the plant, and using bacteria to process it into a burnable fuel. From grass to gasoline.

So we can have cars that run off our raw garbage?

Among other things. That usually requires some bacterial or chemical processes to refine it into a usable fuel. Using plant matter or organic waste is pretty straightforward. They use cow and human feces to generate electricity in rural villages in Africa or India for example. It's probably just as well, and more efficient in the long run, to use plants, typically inedible plants or plant parts (that is after all what a fair margin of human waste globally is: indigestible plant matter).

That's good but how would we be able to stop the oil and electrical companies before they reach peak production when oil dries up?

Don't care. There will be other companies producing energy using other methods or those companies themselves will switch over as the prices of energy increase and public pressure on their profitability increase (as we saw with the "windfall" profit tax movements last year).

There's several American companies trying to get government sponsorship to switch over to natural gas for example. I have no problem switching over to that as a primary transportation fuel, but I don't see why it should need government money to implement. If anything, removing the government money already involved in oil, ethanol, coal, and other energy supplies would be more helpful than giving more to some new format.

You think Obama will go for it? I heard he wanted to invest in a system where we can actually pump gas in our garage or something like that.

Not up to Obama. Congress won't. Congress is actually the people who are sort of supposed to make decisions about funding things, despite what our history books teach people or our last few administrations have done.

If you're talking about a natural gas converter, yes, that's already around if you have a local natural gas company already supplying it to you (and importantly, a natural gas car. Honda used to make one out in California, I don't think any of the American companies manufacture them right now. They're a huge hit in Germany right now).

You shouldn't need a government mandate to induce it anyway. All that would be needed for that to change is more people to buy CNG powered cars. Probably when the costs of oil and gasoline increase to some substantial level people will do that in greater numbers. Unless there's some other fuel that's cheaper (like some bio-diesel or some variety of ethanol not currently made in America: aka, sugar fuels made in Brazil).

They say lots of things.

Neither I nor the market is that worried it seems.

They say peak oil production is like 30 years away too.

Flying cars. God, I used to love the Jetsons! ;o)

Weston, you are showing your age . . . lol.

Somebody on this thread said something about the oil drying up. Since crude oil – that stuff that is pumped right out of the ground – is made up of mostly carbon waste, I contend that we will never run out of crude oil. About two years ago an MIT graduate in PA figured out how to recompose a form of non-refined crude from carbon waste materials like used tires and discarded plastics. He actually has a patent on the process. That same process is now being used to assist in the production of bio-fuels (not just biodeisel) and other everyday products.

This planet produces carbon waste by the megaton on a daily basis. That is how all those subterranean oil fields came into existence in the first place, and that is why we will never run out of carbon based fuels as long as this planet exists and we wasteful Humans inhabit it.

Now, as for the future of the auto industry . . . It will evolve until we find a way for personal transportation bypass the mere automobile.

And that is just my not-so-humble opinion.