Alternative Energy Vehicles
My next car will be some sort of alternative energy vehicle. It could be just hybrid gas / electric power or something completely alternative such as hydrogen. Even though the initial price of such vehicles is sure to be more than your average car, I am still for this. Surprisingly my primary reason isn't the environment or the price of fuel!
I love efficiency. Sure there are reasons for not wanting to consume finite resources (though what resource isn't truly finite?) but what interests me about alternative energy vehicles enough so that I will spend more to get one is the efficiency once you have it. It's sort of like spending a million dollars on a solar powered car that does 35 miles per hour and only covers several hundred miles in its lifetime. It's the thought of being ultra efficient at some point in it's life that causes one to forget the incredible sacrifice of paying for it's other inefficiencies.
Think of hydrogen energy. At this point, driving a hydrogen powered car around is less efficient than tooling around town in an old petroleum powered SUV because the energy expended to make the hydrogen for the hydrogen car in the first place consumes more total energy than the traditional method. I assume this will change at some point, but it isn't stopping the car companies from developing hydrogen powered cars. Yes, the car companies stand to make some money if the process for making hydrogen becomes more efficient, but a hydrogen powered car is undeniably cool even now compared to its more traditional counterparts.
Minimizing environmental impact is unquestionably the most significant byproduct of this exercise, but to look at it as the only motivating factor is to see the world through rose colored glasses. We should seek to make the least damaging impact but realize that other forces also play in the game. The trick is to make the method with the least impact the most attractive.
Every resource is finite but some are in greater abundance than others.
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