Honda is test marketing a Hydrogen Fuel Cell car this summer in California.
http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/?ef_id=1097:3:s_fe8a6e9574690fd23b196a7 b9f8f0419_1053084402:zzdCGkNIYX4AAEFamUgAAAAv:20080611142458
Is this the beginning of the end for OPEC? God I sure hope so. I would lease one just so I could give OPEC my two-fingered salute!

These cars and others need to be on the market now...problem is they are not and for a least a couple of years...think they will sell like hotcakes if prices are similar to conventional autos.

>>my two-fingered salute

Vee for Victory over gasoline! No more having us all "over a barrel" !!!

And GM is going to test market 100 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles under the “Project Driveway” demonstration program to the greater NY metropolitan area this fall. The GM Sequel was the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to go 300 miles without refueling.

The Chevrolet Volt eclectric car also looks promising:
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

The writing is on the wall, "._. .._ .. . _._ You OPEC"!

Been reading up on the Chevy Volt...roll out late 2010...need it now...think they still are improving the battery...still have not gotten the bugs out of that yet.

One thing that would help would be to get these alternative cars on the market and working well, which should give OPEC a bit of concern. Concern might cause them to figure out a way to lower prices.

A Toyota Prius plug-in will most likely hit the market maybe next year. The first models will likely be NIMH battery packs which will be replaced later on with smaller and lighter Lithion-Ion packs. They should engineer the early NIMH vehicles so that later on they can be re-outfitted with the Lithiom batteries.

I want my "solar" car...the whole body of the car...even the windshields would be solar collectors and then with a yet to be developed "super battery"...well...maybe not in Oregon year round but in the south it might work!

Just because you can make a hydrogen fuel cell car doesn't mean that such a car is economically feasible. As I understand it, it is today more expensive to use hydrogen than gasoline because of the cost to produce hydrogen fuel. That's really the issue with these cars, not the trouble in designing and producing the cars.

Perhaps Honda is betting that advances in technology down the road will change this but I don't think there are any advances in the near-term horizon that will make hydrogen that cheap to make. It could also be that Honda is betting that if (when) gas hits $10/gallon that hydrogen will finally make economic sense as a fuel.

OPEC can't be too worried. It will take decades at best to produce enough hydrogen cars and capacity to use them (fuel centers, etc). Gasoline-powered cars worldwide are going to be around for a long time. Oil is used in everything, not just gasoline. Petroleum is used to make fertilizer to grow food for example, and that isn't going to change for a while either.

As for electric cars...they still need electricity that has to come from somewhere. In some parts of the country, electricity is really expensive. I don't know how much electricity these cars would draw but it's going to have to be cheaper than using gasoline.

Andrew