The economy is in the news today, and one feature of economic news is the automobile industry. The 'green' car is all the rage, the Car Of The Future that will save us all from certain environmental and economic doom. Riiiight.

There's two words used in conjunction with discussions of that future, utopia, and dystopia. Each has a different image associated with it, the utopia car of the future will be silent, clean, and super-fast. Dystopia motors, on the other hand, will reek of half-burned fuel, crab sideways like a monster truck, and be chauffeured with Road Warrior movie extras, all battling over the Precious Juice. Why such a contrast? Because we're at a crossroads. Maybe there's no devil, no motorcycle, no guitar involved, but we're certainly at what amounts to a decision line, it would seem.

Or, ARE we? How much of all of this is just plain enviro-hype, eco-propaganda dreamed up by the same people that brought us 'peak oil' and other flights of energy fancy? We are talking, essentially, about the oil industry in its' many permutations and manifestations, the same industry that took the Rockefellers and others to fame and (mis)fortune, anchoring point of television series like Dallas and today's evening news, and now the arch-villain in the quest to save the drowning polar bears.

Well, people are fighting AND dying over energy, something like 100 people burned themselves to death when breaching a gas pipeline in Africa, and of course there is the Iraq war, which most people would probably tend to agree has mainly to do with oil.

Sooo....how do we get beyond Thunderdome, and get more towards Logan's Run, here?

Answers and theories vary, from cell-phone battery-powered futuristic hot rods to a chicken coop in the trunk, to simply abolishing highways and cars completely. Is there no happy medium, no golden mean between gritty football-padded realism on one side, and golden disco-suits with white headbands and equally white complexions on the other? How are we going to do this?

I think the car of the future will be the hybrid, an omnivore, a multi-fuel/multi-source vehicle that can operate off more than one energy source. I think as time progresses, we'll see better batteries, maybe some kind of heat battery a la Formula One, but with better endurance, something that charges itself while you park, but can also be hooked up to a power source, or driven by an onboard generator, which is essentially how the current hybrids operate. I don't think we'll see room-temperature superconductors, I don't think we'll see Mr. Fusion, but I do think we'll see some pretty interesting and exciting designs in the next ten years.