Jim Motavalli

What a great idea: Chris Naughton of Honda called, and offered to let me drive the exclusive FCX Clarity fuel-cell car--not for five minutes, but on a four-hour round-trip excursion to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where it would be topped off at the local filling station with four kilograms of pressurized hydrogen (at 5,000 pounds per square inch).

Then I thought about it a bit and came back with a counter offer: Since that would take a huge chunk out of my day, why not instead just pick it up in Manhattan and drive it back to Connecticut, where I live? We decided he'd drop me off in Greenwich, home to many hedge fund managers who are a bit preoccupied right now.

The FCX Clarity takes Manhattan. (Jim Motavalli photo)

So I trained into Grand Central, and there was the Clarity on Lexington Avenue, resplendent in the one available color: Star Garnet Metallic. "I drew a crowd," Naughton said. "They knew it was a hydrogen car." Indeed it is, and one of only four currently on U.S. roads. The other three are in the hands of celebrities, including one whose keys went to the actress Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband, the stellar film director Christopher Guest.

Although the FCX Clarity is vaguely Accord-like, that impression vanishes quickly in the well-finished cabin, which includes a really cool futuristic display with a color-changing "energy ball" that gets bigger when more energy is being drawn. This is no half-baked concept car with dangling wires: There are seat heaters and coolers, satellite radio, voice-activated navigation (which got us to Greenwich), and even adaptive cruise control, which allows the driver to automatically keep pace with the car ahead. Get too close, and the FCX slams its electronic foot down with near-threshold braking.

The car starts with the push of the power button, and emits a trademark and not unpleasant "whoosh!" which is not the 100-kilowatt electric motor but the air compressor (which feeds oxygen to the fuel cell). The shifter is a tiny lever you pull forward and then down into drive. Everything about the car feels light and well-balanced, including the door action, the assisted steering, and the effective braking. It accelerates eagerly up to a governed top speed of 100 mph, though I never had it past 70.

We stopped on Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx so Naughton could buy some coffee. We got some curious stares from the car wash across the street, but passersby seemed to have other things to occupy their time. At the curb with the radio on, the fuel cell was disengaged and the car was drawing power from its lithium-ion battery pack, which Naughton says has been trouble-free so far.

A kilogram of hydrogen has approximately the same energy density as a gallon of gasoline. The FCX is actually rated by the EPA for fuel economy, and it gets the equivalent of 65 mpg on the highway and 70 in town (yes, reversed from the usual numbers). The range is 280 miles on a full tank, which is getting near consumer acceptability.

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When the automobile was new in 1900, there was no clear consensus which technology would triumph. Would it be gasoline, steam or electricity? The smart money was on electricity, which shows that the smart money can be wrong.

We're in a similar period now, trying to find what comes after the straightforward, gas-burning internal-combustion engine. There's still a lot of fog, and it's unlikely to clear soon. But from where I sit today, here are eight leading technologies, listed in priority order from most-likely to could-be-a-contender:

1. Plug-In Hybrids. There's no question that plug-in hybrids, with 40-mile all-electric range and the ability to recharge from standard house current, will be on the market in the next two or three years. The leading (and only) mainstream players are General Motors (which plans on introducing a Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid) and Toyota (with an adapted Prius). Ambitious startups (Fisker, BYD) are also planning to field plug-in hybrids. The big challenge for all of them is developing a lithium-ion battery pack that can stand up to repeated discharge and recharge cycles and still demonstrate the longevity that today's nickel-metal-hydride hybrid battery packs have had. GM and Toyota talk about 2010 introductions, but battery development headaches could delay that.

2. Battery Electrics. Again, it's all about the batteries. Lithium-ion is the current leader, but is it ready to carry four passengers in a fully featured, crashworthy sedan more than 200 miles? It's time to be cautiously optimistic. Nissan has plans to bring an electric car to the U.S. by 2010. Chrysler, which has been lagging in green technology, surprised the world by suddenly announcing a concept car known as the Dodge EV, a sports car with a lithium-ion battery pack. It claimed 150-mile range and blistering acceleration of zero to 60 in less than five seconds. Some Chrysler electric is to be on the market by 2010. The sports car was clearly aimed at the Tesla Roadster, a California-built $100,000 exotic which (like the Chrysler) sports a Lotus-designed body.

3. Range Extenders. General Motors is making a big, bold step forward by building the Chevrolet Volt, with production slated for the end of 2010 (as a 2011 model). The Volt is something new: an electric car with a gas motor whose only function (it's not connected to the wheels) is to keep the electric motor spinning after the batteries are depleted. GM had this field (also known as "series hybrids") to itself, but Chrysler has jumped into the fray with range-extender versions of the Town and Country minivan and Jeep Wrangler. As with plug-in hybrids, 40 miles can be enjoyed in battery-only mode, but the gas engine extends that to 400 miles or more.

4. Very Small Cars. It doesn't have to be a hybrid; in fact, some of our current hybrids, based on SUVs, are actually gas guzzlers. High fuel prices have created a strong American market for very small cars, and carmakers such as Ford have been emboldened to start selling in the U.S. tiny, fuel- and space-efficient cars once relegated only to Europe or Asia. Consider the Toyota iQ. The minuscule car is just 118 inches long, but can carry three adults (plus a child)! It reportedly achieves 60/51 mpg fuel economy. The Toyota of 10 years ago would never have contemplated selling iQs in the U.S., but now it is definitely being considered.

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You might think that all the emphasis on clean and green cars in recent years -- and all the talk about people finally giving up their SUVs -- would have an effect on overall fuel economy. And you'd be right!

A new Environmental Protection Agency report concludes that the average "light duty" vehicle (cars and light trucks) got 20.8 miles per gallon in model year 2008. That's a small but heartening increase over the 20.6 mpg they got in 2007.

SUVs are going begging.

What's more, the EPA says that its study of sales data shows that subcompacts, compacts and midsized cars are the only classes meeting projections. Big gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups are down as much as 25 percent. And -- can this be the United States of America? -- the four-cylinder engine has gained ground over the six and V-8.

The EPA thinks its projections are too conservative, and that the actual increase in mileage is even more.

For those of us who had reluctantly concluded that SUVs were part of America's "sacred way of life," this is very good news. One wishes the improvements were bigger, but this is an incremental shift. The last time we saw it was from 1975 (after the Arab oil embargo) through the early 1980s. Remember Ronald Reagan removing the solar panels from the White House? That was also around the time that gas prices plummeted, and the country went to sleep on fuel economy.

The EPA actually seems passionate about reducing our fossil fuel intake even further. "Fuel economy is directly related to energy security," it says, "because light-duty vehicles account for approximately 40 percent of all U.S. oil consumption, and much of this oil is imported."

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The original Honda Insight, which broke the fuel economy barrier with 70 miles per gallon on the highway, certainly made a splash when it appeared on American roads back in 1999.

Although the Insight was the first hybrid for sale in the U.S., beating out the Toyota Prius, its one-liter engine, limited seating, relatively rough ride and bare-bones accommodations kept it a niche vehicle. The aluminum-bodied car was super-light, less than 2,000 pounds, but the weight advantage also made is susceptible to crosswinds. I remember driving one over a bridge and fighting the wheel to keep it in line. I liked it, though.

Honda's Insight concept car: a Prius fighter.

But now the Honda Insight is back as an approximately $18,000 five-passenger hatchback Prius fighter, and it's much better looking this time (sharing styling with the company's sleek FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel-cell car). The platform is all new for Honda, with the battery pack and controller safely tucked away below the cargo area. As with the earlier Insight and Civic Hybrid, the new generation of the Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system runs mainly on the gas engine and uses the electric motor as a booster.

Honda has huge ambitions for new Insight sales, anticipating a not-impossible 100,000 a year in North America (half of the worldwide sales). This carmaker has some clean car bragging rights. It introduced the first low-emission gasoline vehicles, the first hybrid on the U.S. market and the world's first EPA-certified hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle.

Honda spokesman Chris Naughton says the new Insight will be at the Paris Auto Show, which starts October 4, though there's no guarantee more information will be forthcoming even then. "There's not much information out there, and much of what's being said is speculation," Naughton says. "Though it could be considered sound speculation if you report that the IMA system will have an evolutionary design."

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Though he didn't have much to say about it at the just-concluded Republican National Convention, where most of the energy talk concerned offshore drilling, John McCain went on record last June as favoring a $300 million federal prize to deliver an automotive battery with "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrid or electric cars."

The constantly evolving Chevrolet Volt: Whose batteries will it use? (General Motors photo)

McCain also said he would stiffen fines on automakers that play fast and loose with Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, and pump up incentives for developing alternative fuels.

Remember, he said all this back in June when prices were over $4 a gallon. With the tiny easing of prices since then, perhaps the McCain campaign has back-burnered this bright idea. Besides, he makes more headlines when he talked about offshore drilling.

But, wow, $300 million, that's a lot of money! I agree with McCain that this kind of competition can foster a lot of useful innovation. But I'd have to be convinced we could quickly develop technology to "leapfrog" what is going into prototype electric cars and trucks right now. And the fast-moving global race to develop clean cars may be all the incentive cutting-edge companies need.

The state of the art for batteries today is lithium-ion. And a leading player is Massachusetts-based A123 Systems, which the Department of Energy (presumed host of McCain's contest) would not have to go far to find -- they're already working together. A123 is well connected both at DOE and the auto companies with batteries for the next generation of hybrids, as well as plug-in hybrids.

A123's battery technology is being considered for what I would call General Motors' most important project: The Chevrolet Volt, which is tentatively scheduled for showrooms in 2010. The Volt is a new kind of hybrid, with a gasoline motor that's not connected to the wheels -- instead, it's there to keep the batteries charged and provide much greater range than is possible today with conventional electric cars.

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General Motors has some real clunkers for which it waves a green flag. Take the new $71,685 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, which goes on sale this month. It costs $3,600 more than a standard Escalade, and achieves fuel economy of...20 mpg in town and 21 on the highway. Sure, the conventional Escalade is much worse at 12 and 15 mpg, but even as an innovative dual-mode hybrid, the Sierra Club is not going to be celebrating its release.

The all-new Cruze: 40 mpg?

GM should see waving flags in its sales numbers. The Escalade, for instance, was down more than 40 percent from July 2007 to July 2008. Nobody wants big SUVs.

But GM has some models that do deserve attention, such as the Cobalt Xtra Fuel Economy (XFE). For 2009, that one gets a very impressive 37 highway mpg (one mpg more than in 2008), a feat it achieves via variable valve timing, a new and taller final drive and trick tires with low rolling resistance.

The Cobalt is kind of plain-jane, but it's got bragging rights. When it was introduced last year, the XFE was six percent of Cobalt sales; now it's 15 percent. Through July, the 2008 Cobalt was a whopping 29 percent of total Chevrolet sales. The Cobalt line is only around through the 2010 model year, however, and will be replaced by the all-new Cruze (which rides on GM's compact Delta platform).

Initial reports have said the Cruze, built in Lordstown, Ohio and around the world, will get more than 40 mpg, but there's also news that the car will be larger than the Cobalt -- a danger sign.

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I don't really understand General Motors. The company is totally on the ropes, reporting a three-month loss of $15.5 billion in early August, with North American sales down 20 percent. Some 74,000 workers could lose their jobs in a new round of buyouts and early retirements. And more factories making big SUVs and trucks will close.

The Tahoe XFE: only modest fuel-efficiency gains.

We're still waiting for competitive small cars that would get people excited about going into a GM showroom. Meanwhile, the company's strategy is...to make minuscule improvements to its big Silverados, Sierras, Tahoes and Yukons and paint them PR green.

The new Xtra Fuel Economy (XFE) models (all with two-wheel-drive and the 5.3-liter V-8 engine), deliver a five percent improvement in highway mileage and seven percent in city driving! Wow! A combination of weight loss, aerodynamics and mechanical improvements gets them to 15 city and 21 highway! Standard big boys are at 14/20, so if you do much highway driving you'll hardly notice an improvement.

The same basic problem exists with GM's big hybrids. The '06 Chevy Silverado Hybrid, for instance, delivers 16/19 mpg. Not exactly impressive, and again hardly better than the standard (and cheaper) truck. For '09, GM will put its sophisticated dual-mode hybrid system in the Silverado, for a claimed 25 percent overall fuel economy improvement. But it's still a gas guzzler.

Guess what? GM trotted out its $50,000 dual-mode Yukon and Tahoe hybrids (21 city/22 highway, comparable to a standard four-cylinder Toyota Camry), and sales have been, well, slow. Instead of the projected 10,000 to 15,000 per year, GM has been selling more like 500 a month.

Here's the problem: They're too big! People don't want big cars and trucks anymore! GM argues that it can have more impact on the environment by improving the performance of the big vehicles that "people want to buy" than it can making small, fuel-efficient cars. But that argument is threadbare today.

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I was looking for the epicenter of the solar revolution, and I found it at the Gathering of the Vibes.

Imagine a hippie rock festival so immaculately dedicated to the Woodstock legacy that a late-night performance by Phil Lesh and his (much younger) friends was treated like a visitation from the Gods. Imagine tie-dye as the uniform of choice, and the Bridgeport, Connecticut sea breezes scented with the aroma of much marijuana. It was there that I discovered the Solar Bus.

Although it is normally to be found in northern Vermont, the brush-painted Solar Bus was temporarily relocated to Bridgeport, where its roof-mounted solar array was recharging hippie cellphones and running a bubbling fountain and some hopping frog toys. At night, it ran a projector that showed cartoons to delighted camping children.

It is by no means coincidental that the owner of the Solar Bus, Gary Beckwith, is a former Deadhead. A wiry young man with a full head of black curls, he gravitates to summer festivals like the Vibes and Vermont's Solar Fest (which begins with a thanks to Mother Nature and a ceremonial invocation to the equinox).

But despite the countercultural trappings, Beckwith is a serious techie who has done great things with his Solar Bus, a 1982 Crown Supercoach that moved California school kids until 2003.

"We yanked out the seats, put some solar panels on the roof, gave it a paint job, and started driving around showing and teaching people about the real uses of renewable energy," says Beckwith.

Let me guess: Up to this point you probably thought that the Solar Bus was actually powered by solar, didn't you? Isn't that why they call it a solar bus?

The solar panels actually power appliances and even the occasional rock music stage, but they are hardly able to give a large steel bus much driving range.

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The Hummer may be a symbol of everything environmentalists hate, but there's one part of it that could win a "much improved" award -- the tailpipe. Although the Hummer guzzles gas like a supertanker, it also benefits from modern emissions control technology.

Bill Clinton's 1967 Mustang: Scrapped for $500?

The average new car emits only a 10^th as many hydrocarbons as the average car on the road, and a 20^th of 1960s cars. A 1962 VW Bug undoubtedly causes more smog than a 2008 Ford Expedition.

The idea of "cash for clunkers" programs is that they get the gross polluters off the road. According to a California study cited by the New York Times, cars that are 13 years old or older cover only 25 percent of the miles driven, but cause 75 percent of the air pollution. The dirtiest 10 percent emit 59 percent of hydrocarbons and 47 percent of all carbon monoxide, says the California Air Resources Board.

Thirty percent of the 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads are at least 15 years old, so there are 75 million potential "clunkers" out there, the Times said.

These takeback programs have been tried out in several states and Canadian provinces, but they run into an implacable opponent: The classic car owner. Although the programs are voluntary, they deprive classic owners of access to old clunker "parts cars." One man's junk is another's treasure, apparently.

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It's fascinating to watch Honda's hybrid strategy unfold. I have been, for years, predicting that Honda would "hybridize" its best-selling Fit hatchback. And that's finally likely to happen. But Honda is also planning something rather better: It's finally coming out with a ground-up, clean-sheet-of-paper Prius-killer.

The two generations of the Toyota Prius have sold an incredible 757,000 (630,000 of them 2004 and beyond). Honda has sold only 277,000 hybrids total, despite being first out of the gate in the U.S. (1999) with the two-seater Insight. Although the Insight was a dedicated hybrid like the Prius, its limited seating and bare-bones accommodations turned off many buyers.

But Honda will introduce an all-new model in calendar year 2009 that, according to spokesman Chris Naughton, will be "on a platform not shared with any other model, in other words, not available in non-hybrid form."

As Naughton puts it, the Insight "made a few people very happy." The new model could make a lot of people very happy, and get the company a long way to its goal of 500,000 hybrid sales a year. It will probably be a five-door hatchback smaller than the current Prius, and sell for less-around $18,000, reports Business Week. The U.S., Japan and Europe are targeted.

Honda President Takeo Fukui acknowledged in a recent mea culpa (May 21 in Tokyo) that Toyota has had the better hybrid strategy. But he plans to remedy that aggressively, not only with the new car for 2009 but also the long-denied hybrid version of the Fit (which would get what, 50 mpg?) and even a hybrid sports car, the CR-Z.

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Dave Buchko, an advanced powertrain spokesperson for BMW, recently delivered the company's Hydrogen 7 car to me for a test drive.

Unlike other fuel-cell based models from competitors, the Hydrogen 7 carries in its trunk a bullet-proof, drop-proof and crash-resistant tank of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen. The futuristic Beamer can burn regular unleaded or liquid hydrogen in its beefy V12.

Here, Buchko talks about his valuable charge:

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“In some cases, the exhaust from the Hydrogen 7 is cleaner than the actual air,” Dave Buchko tells me. We are standing in my driveway next to his charge, a heavily art-directed BMW, which has the words “Clean Energy” emblazoned on its side. I am not tempted to breathe in its exhaust, however clean it may be.

Buchko, who is an advanced powertrain spokesman for BMW, delivered the car to me and brought his young son, Jamie, along for the ride. Given that his family's involved, I believe what he's saying about the safety of hydrogen (no visions of the Hindenburg for him) and the bullet-proof, drop-proof and crash-resistant nature of its hydrogen tank.

BMW's Dave Buchko, son Jamie and BMW's Hydrogen 7.

The Hydrogen 7 has a detuned 12-cylinder, internal-combustion engine. Normally cars with V-12s are horrible gas guzzlers. The standard-issue big boy known as the 760Li gets a miserable combined fuel economy of 15 miles per gallon, and will if allowed consume 22.8 barrels of oil annually. The fairly luxurious H7 runs on gasoline if you want it to, but a push of the “H2” button and its taking in hydrogen from the big cryogenic tank that occupies half the trunk.

Why cryogenic? Well ...

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It's a big government report, with charts and graphs. If you've ignored every other technical paper from an agency with a long name, it sure looks like you can cheerfully deep-six the one released last week, since it contains phrases like "World marketed energy consumption is projected to increase by 57 percent from 2004 to 2030. Total energy demand in the non-OECD countries increases by 95 percent, compared with an increase of 24 percent in the OECD countries."

What's an OECD country?* Who cares, right? But actually this report from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) is kind of a big deal, because of what it says about the collision course between business as usual and our climate and peak oil realities. The report makes a lot of assumptions, among them continued rising energy demand for the next two decades, mainly from the Third World (and especially China). It says that those cries of "Oil! Oil!" will push prices to $186 a barrel. What's more, coal will stay on the front burner as our largest source of electricity.

This is plainly impossible, both from the planet's point of view and the cold facts about our energy economy.

Coal is the biggest global warming aggravator, and climate visionaries such as NASA's James Hansen, not to mention myriad and increasingly vocal college students, are calling for "No New Coal." Soaring oil prices have already put a big crimp in demand, and it's far from clear we would even have it to pump if EIA's projections bear out.

The federal government needs to do energy outlooks, but this one is likely to be far off the mark. For instance, on June 19 China (the second-largest oil consumer today) announced steep 17 percent hikes in gasoline and diesel prices "to rein in energy consumption," according to Bloomberg.com. Electricity is going up, too, which should at least dent coal use.

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