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.
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