I first read about hybrid electric cars around 1980 in an issue of "Mother Earth News." The author converted an Opel GT to hybrid power and it seemed to work fairly well. The author used a 5 HP gas engine to drive a generator and recharge batteries when stopped (and used regenerative braking), with the batteries being used for peak demands like acceleration. It took a while before the techonolgy was ready for prime time, but that does seem to be the case now. A couple years ago, I heard that Toyota and Honda were losing serious money on each hybrid sold, but they were willing to do so to develop the technology and to establish it in the marketplace. Total hybrid sales in the US are still a miniscule percentage of all auto sales, but that may be changing.

One of my coworkers bought a Toyota hybrid last month. It carried 5 of us to lunch one day and 3 of us aren't exactly small people. It also ranks very high on the geek meter. I'd like to learn how well it handles in snow. It's possible my next auto purchase could be a hybrid.

Due to the complexity and expense involved, I still believe that hybrids are an interim technology. By interim, I mean the next 10-20 years. Pure electric cars with conventional batteries will still have too many drawbacks to be a good solution for most people, IMO. However, replace the batteries with fuel cells and you could have something very good. Right now, fuel cells are still very expensive per kilowatt produced (and you need about 100 KW for even a small car), but improvements are being made every year. The fuel cells that can strip off hydrogen from an alcohol or from gasoline would probably be the first to market even though the catalyst makes the cell more expensive. However, in the long term, if we can create some form of hydrogen infrastructure, then a pure H2/air fuel cell would be the best solution.

Producing the hydrogen is the hard part. Electrolysis is expensive but clean if you use a clean electric source (nuclear, solar, wind). Stripping hydrogen from natural gas is more cost effective but it still releases CO2. Most fuel production has a significant economy of scale, but perhaps it would be possible to use on the spot production at the filling station to eliminate the high transport and storage costs.