Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries will soon revolutionize the way we think about powering cars.

First in the Li-Ion lineup is the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), covered in Part 1. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Plug-in Hybrids soon. But what about a pure electric car?

If you’ve heard of the Tesla, you’re probably as anxious as I am to drive one. The Tesla is a cooperative venture between Lotus in Britain and Tesla Motors in San Carlos, CA. With 6,831 Li-Ion batteries powering a 248 horsepower electric motor, this lightweight sports car based on the Lotus Elise has Corvette-like acceleration up to 70 mph or so, with a top speed of 130.

Driven “normally” it has a range of 250 to 300 miles. And you just charge it at home overnight.

The first run of 220 cars sold out practically overnight at $100,000 each, paid in full up front for delivery later this year.

Don’t have a hundred-grand lying around but still want to escape from the whole gasoline thing? Then consider Honda’s Natural Gas Civic, used by fleets for years but now available to us regular folks. With a range over 300 miles, this model gets good fuel economy and produces almost no pollution.

There are numerous natural gas filling stations around. Or, have a device named Phill (available through Honda) installed in your home’s natural gas line and fill up there! Check with your Honda dealer to learn about federal tax credits available for both the car and Phill. 

Other fuels such as diesel, bio-diesel and ethanol are also in the news. With low-sulphur diesel available soon, you’ll see diesels from Mercedes Benz, BMW, VW and American manufacturers for sale in the next few years. And don’t worry—modern diesels are nothing like the noisy, smoking ones from decades ago. I drove the Mercedes E320 CDI diesel for a week and found it to be fabulous. Acceleration from a stop was swift with four aboard, and I averaged 30 mpg.

Bio-diesel is diesel fuel made from various bio-ingredients such as peanut oil, and can be burned in modified diesel cars, or mixed with regular diesel fuel to lessen the demand for oil. Modern diesels will also be teamed up with electric motors for diesel-electric hybrids, increasing the fuel economy of those future hybrid models.

Ethanol gets a lot of press but doesn’t live up to the hype, in this writer’s opinion. It takes as much energy to produce as it gives back when burned. It is also less power dense than gasoline, so fuel economy drops by about 20 percent. E-85, which is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, can be used in many Ford and GM vehicles specially designed for E-85. Ethanol, however, attracts moisture (not good) and is corrosive to certain metals including some aluminum alloys, so cannot be safely used in many current engines, especially motorcycle engines.

Further, due to Ethanol’s chemical properties, it cannot be pumped through the nation’s existing oil and fuel pipelines. It must be trucked, burning even more fuel! Finally, those who tout Brazil’s large-scale switch to ethanol forget that they do it with sugar cane, which yields three times more ethanol energy than the corn we use.

What about hydrogen fuel cell cars? Our Governor is putting a lot of your tax contributions into building a hydrogen fuel infrastructure in California. But don’t rush out to buy your fuel cell car just yet. Significant production is still 15 to 20 years away because there are many problems yet to solve. Promising, perhaps, but not yet practical.

As with E-85, hydrogen takes about as much energy to produce as it gives back when used to power electric motors. I drove Honda’s FCX hydrogen fuel cell car. It drove just fine—all you hear is the whine of electric motors. And all that comes out the tailpipe is water vapor. If that sounds good, think of what LA would be like 50 years from now with ten million cars spewing water vapor into the air. With our hot summers, think Bangkok or Manila. But, since I won’t be around then….

With continuing advances, the automobile has a bright future—even if motors whine instead of roar. My favored scenario? Follow the French and expand our network of nuclear power plants (they’re far safer now), using that energy for charging our Li-Ion pure electric cars. We would then have enormously reduced need for oil, gasoline, diesel, ethanol, and hydrogen.

Michael Cooney, Co-founder, Global Brand Development (818) 522-1970