Electric cars still pose significant technological challenges. They're expensive, have limited range, take a long time to recharge, rely on rare and expensive elements, and may pose novel safety risks (e.g.: the Volt's delayed-response battery fire collision behavior).
I'd love to see something replace the fossil-fuel internal combustion passenger vehicle. It's going to be a tough solution, and I suspect it'll ultimately be a mix of public transit (vastly higher efficiencies, social and other costs), human-powered vehicles (bikes are great in human-scale cities and small towns), and some form of biofuel-powered vehicle. Simple truth is that liquid hydrocarbon fuels are energy dense, well understood, clean (relatively) and efficient. The problem has been the source we use.
My suspicion is that personal IC vehicles of 20 years from now will use a mix of power sources, and hybrid drives may be common (they offer certain efficiencies), but that a liquid hydrocarbon fuel source will be a large part of that mix. The difference is that we'll be growing rather than drilling or mining that fuel, at least to a large extent.
I'd love to see something replace the fossil-fuel internal combustion passenger vehicle. It's going to be a tough solution, and I suspect it'll ultimately be a mix of public transit (vastly higher efficiencies, social and other costs), human-powered vehicles (bikes are great in human-scale cities and small towns), and some form of biofuel-powered vehicle. Simple truth is that liquid hydrocarbon fuels are energy dense, well understood, clean (relatively) and efficient. The problem has been the source we use.
My suspicion is that personal IC vehicles of 20 years from now will use a mix of power sources, and hybrid drives may be common (they offer certain efficiencies), but that a liquid hydrocarbon fuel source will be a large part of that mix. The difference is that we'll be growing rather than drilling or mining that fuel, at least to a large extent.