One of the more interesting discussions I had over the holidays was with a couple friends of mine who work at Ford. As usual (to my wife’s good-natured annoyance) the topic eventually turned to cars. What I’ve been really curious about these days is figuring out what our long-term replacement for traditional gasoline engines will be. There seems to be little doubt even among the average citizen that we can’t depend on oil forever, and that some day we’re going to have to get off the teat of the middle east. Of course, no one knows for sure what exactly our savior will be, but there’s plenty of speculation to go around.

Currently the two main candidates are pure electric cars and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Both of these types of automobiles actually exist and can be bought (sort of) right now; if you’ve got about $100,000 you can grab a blisteringly fast all-electric Tesla Roadster, and for $600 a month and a lot of luck you can get on Honda’s list to lease the family-friendly hydrogen powered FCX Clarity — provided you live in southern California where they’ve installed some hydrogen filling stations, that is. (No, you can’t buy the FCX Clarity — some estimates value the vehicles at $10 million each, given the R&D costs Honda has put into them.) Neither of these vehicles emits anything harmful; the Tesla just gives off a little heat, and the only thing that comes out of the FCX Clarity’s tailpipe is pure water vapor.

2008 Tesla Roadster

First let’s take a look at the Tesla as the poster boy for all-electric vehicles. It simply plugs in to charge, just like a cell phone or laptop, and then can drive a couple hundred miles (unless you’re really flogging the hell out of it). Most owners, I understand, get a high-voltage plug installed in their garage so it can fully charge in about 3.5 hours; if you’re somewhere else though and you have to plug it into a standard wall outlet, it’s going to take the better part of a day. Total charge cost is only a few bucks. The electric engine is quite torquey — typical of electric motors — resulting in impressive performance. It only seats two, but a sedan is coming next year. Some argue that with electric vehicles you’re just shifting pollution from your tailpipe to the power plant that produces the electricity you use to charge the thing; to some extent that’s true, but it’s still more efficient and less polluting than every individual producing their own power (i.e., combustion engines).

The FCX Clarity is the latest in a long line of prototype hydrogen vehicles, and is the first one to ever be made available to the public. It’s also one of the only purpose-built hydrogen fuel cell cars; it wasn’t hacked together from an existing model, such as BMW, GM, and Ford have done previously. This gives Honda a huge advantage; while prototypes from other companies usually wind up being ridiculously heavy (and sometimes with cramped interiors, due to shoehorning hydrogen components in places not designer for them), the FCX Clarity is roughly the size and weight of a 2008 Honda Accord, and has generous interior room to boot. Consequently, it drives like a normal car. As mentioned, the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is water, but the biggest advantage vehicles like the FCX Clarity have over their electric counterparts is the refueling time: it only takes a couple minutes to fill it up, unlike the several hours minimum on the Tesla, and you do it just like you fill up your gas-powered car now.

Honda FCX Clarity

The primary downside for hydrogen fuel cell cars is that, well, they’re carrying hydrogen. Based on my research, though, it appears that this is going to be more of a public perception problem than an actual safety problem. The predominate stigma, naturally, is that some people believe hydrogen is too dangerous to be used in every road-going vehicle. While gasoline is indeed flammable, it’s not under pressure like the hydrogen in a car would be. That said, the latest-generation hydrogen tanks have never been shown to rupture when subjected to any number of intense crash tests. I’ve never seen people who express such fears about hydrogen ever point to a specific incident that validates the claim — it appears at this time to just be a stigma founded on, I’m guessing, that spectacular disaster from way back in 1937. If a hydrogen tank did rupture, it burns very differently from gas — gasoline pools, hydrogen jets. This set of comparison photos showing the difference is a little rigged — they punctured the hydrogen tank in the back but cut the fuel line more toward the front of the car — but you get the idea of how they burn differently. The fact that the NTSB — the strict government agency responsible for mandating all that safety equipment on our cars — approved the FCX Clarity’s tank design is another vote of confidence.

Both of these vehicles, while no longer dependent on gasoline, still need to get their power from somewhere. Electrics will charge from the power grid (the miserable status of which is a whole ‘nother issue, mkay?), an existing infrastructure more or less, but hydrogen will have to be produced somehow. The good news is that a number of hydrogen production facilities are already underway, and costs are dropping. Currently, producing hydrogen to run a vehicle like the FCX Clarity emits about 60% of the pollutants as an equivalent gasoline car. So we’re already ahead in that sense, but newer and more efficient methods are being developed. There’s a ton of funny math and estimates if you’re interested (that site was sent to me via Twitter by Greg Blencoe, Hydrogen Discoveries CEO) but the long and short of it is that hydrogen should be significantly cheaper than gas for us — the retail consumer — in the long run. Poke around that Hydrogen Discoveries site with a grain of salt; it’s obviously a pro-hydrogen site, but there’s some interesting info on there.

Of course, the big challenge for either of these powertrains for widespread adoption is the infrastructure. For the electric car to be viable, we’d need high-speed chargers everywhere. Even though the power grid already exists, those charging stations do not. And even if you’ve got one of those quick charging stations, it’s still going to take hours to fully charge your car. What happens when you take a long road trip? Do you want to stop for an hour or two every few hundred miles? Probably not.

While I like the merits of both, it’s for that reason alone that I personally would pick the hydrogen system. Shell gas stations in southern California have installed hydrogen pumps to support the FCX Clarity, and it looks and feels just like filling up your current car — and it can be done in just a few minutes. For a society used to being on-the-go, a quick fill-up is a must. Moreover, you’ll one day have the option of at-home hydrogen production stations as well, so you can fill up right in your garage. The electric car is great, and the Tesla is an amazing achievement, but the FCX Clarity is, I think, an epic milestone in the history of the car. It’s proof that a gasoline-free, pollutant-free vehicle that looks like a car, drives like a car, and most importantly fits our lifestyle like a car is entirely possible. Companies that spend heavily in R&D — Toyota, Honda, and Ford — while having electric hybrids in the short term are also betting that hydrogen is the long-term future.

As my friend that works at Ford pointed out, one important final piece of this puzzle would be the government. The government may need to, some time relatively soon, come out in favor of one technology or the other. The last thing we need is a BetaMAX vs VHS or HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray battle on a much larger, much more expensive scale. I personally hope that support of gasoline-free cars, one type or another, fits into President Obama’s plans for energy independence.

If you’ve got opinions, let’s hear it in the comments! Be nice — I know this is a hot topic for some people.

And finally, I love watching Top Gear, so check out these videos of them testing the Tesla and FCX Clarity. They’re not fair and balanced reviews, but they’re amusing and give you a good look at the cars.

Just yesterday, GM finally revealed the production version of one of the most anticipated cars of the decade, perhaps several decades — the Chevy Volt. Some information about the Volt has been available for a long time, but yesterday was the first time anyone outside of GM’s iron curtain laid eyes on what many hope will be the auto giant’s messiah.

The Volt will be different from popular hybrids available today (like the Prius) in that it will be a series hybrid instead of a parallel hybrid (read more about that distinction at Wikipedia, if you care). It’s quite simple: in parallel hybrids like the Prius, Civic hybrid, Camry hybrid, etc, a small electric motor and the traditional gas motor can both drive the wheels. In a series hybrid, only the electric motor can drive the wheels, and the gas engine is there purely as a backup generator to charge the batteries that drive the electric motor. This gives the series hybrid the ability to go a decent distance without burning a single drop of gasoline — in the Volt’s case, GM claims it will be 40 miles.

So 40 miles on just electricity, and since you can plug it into any electrical outlet to charge it (with a cost estimated at around $0.80 for a full charge) this thing will no doubt be very cheap to operate. Imagine how great it would be, if you live less than 20 miles from where you work, to be able to go to and from work all week without ever using any gas. Good for your wallet, good for the environment, everybody wins, right? This thing will be a revolution, won’t it? Ah, but you must be wondering what the Volt will cost.

GM hasn’t unveiled specific pricing yet, but the latest rumblings hint that it will be higher than the $30k GM originally wanted — closer to $40k. Yikes. That’s well above the average car buyer’s means, and is getting into real luxury car territory. And at $40k, you’re starting to get out of the price range where the buyer cares much about fuel economy.

Looking purely at fuel costs, let’s compare. Say in two years, you’re comparing Honda’s new 60 mpg Insight hybrid that costs about $20k (which is supposed to go on sale in 2009) against the Chevy Volt that’s pushing $40k. Here’s where the problem comes in — what’s the Volt’s MPG rating? If you drive less than 40 miles between charges all the time, it consumes no gas at all. Even in that ideal scenario, driving 12,000 miles per year, you’d have to drive the Volt for 25 years before making up the $20k difference from the Honda — and of course by then we’ll finally have our flying cars that we’ve been promised for the past half century or so.

So it’s not really for those looking to save money. But that’s not what this version is about. This car is the tip of the iceberg, the herald of a new way of building automobiles. The shape is pretty conventional, but underneath it is completely different from everything else on the road today. The LED lamps, fastback rear with no traditional exhaust outlets, and high-tech interior with its dual LCD displays and slick touch-sensitive center stack — which looks like the lovechild of a Malibu and an iPod — makes it clear that the Volt is special.

So, will Chevy finally live up to their advertising tagline, “An American revolution?” I absolutely think so. Is it a novelty? At $40k and just 40 electric miles, this first iteration will be. But it’s paving the way for a new generation of automobiles which will be much more impressive — and eventually less expensive — than the Volt.

I realize this is the Internet, but this is a whole new kind of stupid.

Someone over on the CobaltSS.net forums, a web site for car tuning enthusiasts, posted the following:

For real entertainment, feel free to read some of the replies on the subsequent 20 pages of comments.

So I’m driving into work this morning on I-65 south, entering Indianapolis, and there’s a spot where I-465 joins I-65 that is perfect for cops to hide. You know the situation…there’s a low cement divider wall off on the shoulder, and it’s positioned just after a slight crest in the road so you couldn’t possibly see the cops camped out in their favorite hiding until you’re practically on top of them.

This morning, there were three motorcycle cops positioned behind this wall, with their handheld radar units perched atop it. My speed-trap Spidey-sense was tingling, so fortunately I wasn’t speeding when I came over the rise, but several people in the other lane were. As I passed, I watched in my rearview mirror as a cop simply pointed at a driver, and then jerked his thumb over to the side of the road. Obediently, the vehicle pulled over, about 50 yards past the cops’ little bunker area. Between the three cops, they had five vehicles pulled over at once!

Is this laziness or efficiency? My first thought was to wonder that so many pulled over because of a hand signal. I have to believe that at 65 or 70 miles an hour, a number of people this morning “didn’t see” the hand signal…or perhaps really didn’t see it. Considering that none of the cops looked inclined to get on his bike anytime soon, I imagine any such drivers just got away scott-free. Is this a situation where you get punished for doing the right thing? What would you do?

If you were looking for concrete evidence that sky-high gas prices are affecting consumer buying habits en masse, look no further.

The Ford F-150, which has been the best selling vehicle in America for 17 straight years, has, in May 2008, fallen to 5th place behind the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, and the new best selling vehicle the Honda Civic.

All four of those well-built vehicles offer a lot for the money and get about 30 mpg or better on the highway, while most full-size trucks are about half that. With $4 gas, a lot more people appear to be asking themselves the question, “Do I really need that truck?” As I’ve personally pointed out for years, most people who drive them don’t actually need them.

Source: Autoblog

Interestingly, drivers out east (New England and DC) had the worst scores, while drivers in the midwest, where I live, had the highest scores and the lowest failure rate. Also, “…the study found that drivers over the age of 35 were more likely to pass, and women were more likely to fail than men.”

Apparently, one of the “bright spots” of the results was that almost all test-takers knew “how to interpret a solid yellow line.” I’m guessing those drivers could also interpret a solid concrete barrier.

Source: CNN Money

Just sixteen Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradales (a special version of the standard 360) were imported to Australia and New Zealand, and now there’s at least one fewer gracing those roads. A (very nice — or perhaps very naive) father allowed his son to borrow his extremely rare Challenge Stradale, who promptly got a little too excited with the right pedal and wrapped the beautiful and expensive sports car around a pole.

As sad as that is, it’s not the best part of the story. No, it actually gets funny. Naturally, anyone who wrecks a Ferrari is going to attract some attention. News crews were apparently there within minutes, and mercilessly filmed the son as he called home to tell his father what had happened. Unfortunately, there’s no video record of what the father did to his son later.

I think I would have just never gone home.

Bayonne, NJ: Squirrel chews on power line. Squirrel ignites. Flaming squirrel falls onto parked 2006 Toyota Camry. Camry is engulfed in flame. Squirrel and car both meet their maker.

Imagine filling out that insurance claim.

Via Amazon Automotive Editor’s Blog and Autoblog.

Crappy drivers of the world, this Bud’s for you:

1. You have cruise control. Use it. Or at least you probably have cruise control. This is just a guess, but I’d say that at least 85% of cars sold today have this lovely feature. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in a car that doesn’t have cruise control. Yet almost every day I wind up jockeying for position with someone who can’t seem to decide if they want to do 65, 80, 70, 85, 75–MAKE UP YOUR MIND! The worst offenders are the ones who seem to unconsciously match speed with whoever’s next to them — so you go to try and pass them, and they speed up; if they go to pass someone else, they slow down. Half an hour of this crap gets really irritating. Pick a speed, press the button. Wow, that was hard.
2. Tailgating me when I’m behind a dozen other cars cannot make me go faster. Yeah, you in the big, ugly, compensatory Hummer behind me…I can’t even see the bottom of your bumper over my trunk lid. Guess what? You’re not improving the situation. Yeah, I know we’re going 15 mph below the speed limit…see, it’s called rush hour and semi trucks. Trying to kiss my rear bumper only tempts me to slow down even more to piss you off. Or, if I’m ever driving a car I don’t care about, to slam on the brakes (“I thought I saw a deer!”) and collect the insurance money from your sorry butt. Now back off.
3. If you can’t remember that you activated your turn signal a whole 5 seconds ago, you shouldn’t be driving. Seriously. Turn it off already. Even Alberto Gonzales could remember that, and he said “I don’t recall” 168 times during one Senate hearing. Beyond the memory issue, if you’re that unobservant that you don’t even glance down at your dash a couple times a minute (and you’d better at least be checking your speed, because I know you’re not using cruise control — see item #1) so you might actually notice the bright green blinking arrow, I’d say you have some other issues as well.
4. If you cut me off, you don’t get to flip me off. Say I’m going along in the left lane, about to pass you, and suddenly you decide that right about now is the time to pass that truck you’ve been behind for several minutes — yeah, right now, when I’m practically next to you. So you go ahead and cut me off, causing me to slam on my brakes and swerve at 75 mph, nearly causing a multi-car pileup in your wake. Then you proceed to flip me the middle finger through the window of your ultra-cool 1995 Dodge minivan. Wait, what? What the hell was that, a preemptive strike? “Hey, I’m an asshole…and just in case you weren’t convinced, here ya go!“
5. If crap is falling off of your vehicle, PULL OVER! In the last three months, I’ve almost been killed by flying truck tires, car bumpers, and a chair. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel it when your rear bumper is dragging on the pavement, when one of your giant truck tires is one rubber thread away from flying off the wheel at 75 mph, or that you don’t realize that when you don’t tie down furniture in the back of your pickup, it might — just might — become a high-velocity wooden missile. I’m calling the cops on you people from now on. You truckers too — if that tire’s about to fly off, call it quits before you kill someone. I’ve seen a big piece of retread smash the front half of a small car to nothingness. It’s not pretty.

I think that covers the big ones. Any major peeves of yours when driving? Post in the comments.

I’ll save you the remaining suspense: the Model T won.

Yes, the 86-year-old Ford was, apparently, better equipped to deal with a big hill than the supposed modern destroyer of hills, a HUMMER. Not only that, but the Model T beat the H2 by about 0.8 seconds, a decent margin in the auto racing world (the HUMMER took about 10.74 seconds, the Model T just 9.96 seconds). The Model T was somewhat improved from its stock configuration (which was only 20 horsepower), but it was all using 1920s and -30s period parts — stuff from the original service era of the car. Of course, the economies of power-to-weight ratios immediately spring to mind as a way to explain away this victory of the classic over a modern monstrosity, but in my opinion that doesn’t make it any less cool…I mean, a Model T beat a HUMMER! In a race! And I bet it got better gas mileage doing it.

The HUMMER owners were, naturally, sore losers, saying they would only need another 1,000 feet to win the race (how much dignity must you not have to actually be making excuses for why your $50k+ SUV lost to a wagon with an engine from before the Great Depression?) and that the H2 was like an airplane to the Model T’s mule. However, I’ll remind you that mules can kick. Hard.

Original story on Forbes.com