Hey! Interesting discussion. Tho I would not dismiss diesel so quickly because they fuel infrastructure can easy be "up-converted" to bio-diesel. Since the plants basically take the carbon from their environment, and it is burned back out during combustion, it is essentially carbon neutral. In other words, we do not dig out and rlease carbon naturally sequestered by millions of year of natural processes. The trick is to find a way to create bio-diesel from sources (switch grass? cellulosic? algae?) that themselves do not burn additional fossil fuels - like corn or even sugar (Brazil). And in this, VAG has a decided technical head=start - their European diesel products are state of the art (and can win at LeMans!).

Note that re-building the fuel infrastructure to convert or electric or hydrogen also represents a "sunk" huge cost. Everything we make and consume includes an built-in petroleum investment. The "cleanest" path is the path with least waste. Which is why hybrids (discarded batteries pack!!) is not an efficient or long-term solution.

The second thing we can and should do - and this may be hard to read on a TT board - it to *conserve*! Reduce speed, drive only when needed, check your tire pressure, car pool, the whole Jimmy Carter drill. My TT (3.2) is still getting about 25mpg. All those performance mods, if done in the right way, can actually increase fuel economy (intake, exhaust, wheels and tires, etc).

Diesel TT with a bio-diesel conversion. That's the way to go I think. Twin-turbo-charged.

BioDiesel at least has the possibility of using bacteria to produce the fuel- rather than crops.

However... it still does nothing to address global warming.
It does nothing to address pollution.

While hydrogen would require a huge infrastructure expense, the economy could USE it... the Post WWII- Korea recession was finally ended by the Interstate Highway project... A HUGE infrastructure expense... that hired American workers, and tripled the GNP.


Moreover, switching to a hydrogen economy would be a FINAL infrastructure change... that is, it would result in a perfectly clean energy delivery and storage system...

Once more... if you are gonna change the way we power cars and generate electricity, why not change it to the BEST solution, rather than something that is only a half measure?

Good points. Round and round we go .. agreeing and disagreeing ...

The primary concern around global warming is the anthropogenic release of green house gases. A hydrogen infrastructure would move the release from the vehicle to the power plant (assuming fuel cell). If the power plant was run on solar or wind, then you have a non-polluting solution, except for the creation of that infrastructure. Regardless of what happens with cars, we need to move for more non-polluting power generation. Agreed on that.

However, most of that power generation should be targetted to be used by industrial, commercial, and residential - particularly here in the US. I would suggest that by converting those uses first, and moving cars and trucks to bio-diesel, we would most minimize our costs on the environment. I live in California, and we already have rolling blackouts in the summers. I think bio-diesel would thus have about a 50-100 year window before completing the conversion of cars to fuel cells.

There is no one single answer - there are going to be multiple solutions. I still think bio-diesel (carbon neutral!) is going to be a big part of that mix, especially since the delivery infrastructure is essentially already in place.

But I agree in principle that there would be something beyond bio-diesel.

Certainly we would have to switch over to non-hydrocarbon burning power solutions.

Right now the only sensible solution is nuclear power... despite public hysteria, still the cleanest and safest form of power available.
Its kinda criminal that there hasn't been a nuclear plant built in the US in 30 years....

Supplement nuclear with wind, diffuse solar, tidal, hydroelectric, and geothermal... the thing about nuclear is that you build them near water for cooling, and that uranium decays whether your using it or not... so you might as well be generating full power and diverting excess production to splitting hydrogen out of water.

This would provide all energy needs for the length of time it will take to figure out fusion... which will be the ultimate energy source for humanities future.

And the infrastructure needs would provide real jobs here in the states for the working class..