I wanted to buy a diesel when I bought a new car. But the only options were way out of my price range. On paper, I could have had a new TDI Jetta for about a 4k premium over what I bought my Yaris for. In practice, TDIs fly off the lot as soon as they come in so the dealer's won't negotiate much and its rare to find one equipped such that sticker price is much less than 10k more than I bought my Yaris for.
On the other hand, there's a similar argument to be made for cellulosic ethanol, BUT at this point it's still essentially science fiction (small amounts of cellulosic ethanol have been produced in the lab but currently the amount of energy required to convert cellulose into something fermentable is quite huge). Wikipedia does mention a "gasification" method which sounds like it might be much more energy-efficient, but it also sounds like production in quantity requires a huge amount of bootstrapping before it'll really work out.
Also, the absolutely most fungible and adaptable form of energy is electricity, which can be powered by all of the above AND have the efficiencies of scale to make it much more self-sufficient. I have a very strong suspicion that the long-term winner (at least here on Earth) will be hydrogen fuel cells, with hydrogen generated either at home or at the filling station via electrolysis.
(I also think that in a few million years when our descendants are spacefaring, their power will primarily be solar or ramjet-fueled fusion, depending on whether they're in orbit or in transit, but aside from that being the setting for my current webcomic it's more or less out of my scope of practical interest.)busy bees buzz | sockpuppet revolution[ Parent ]
