Sitting in a Connecticut warehouse, the very first Poulsen Hybrid looks like a standard Honda Civic with immobilizer boots attached to its rear wheels. It is, one would have to say, not the most visually elegant of solutions to the pressing problem of using electric power to extend the range of the internal-combustion automobile. But it's also both practical and affordable.

Ulrik Poulsen and his converted Honda Civic.

Ulrik Poulsen is a mechanical engineer and Danish immigrant whose Shelton, Connecticut-based Bridgeport Magnetics Group makes a range of transformers, power supplies, magnetic cores, audio cables and other products. One new product for Con Edison is an isolation transformer designed to prevent people from getting electric shocks from defective streetlights. But Poulsen is branching out with a bolt-on kit that, he says, can transform ordinary cars into a form of plug-in hybrid. And he's entered his invention as a contestant in the Progressive Auto X Prize, which carries a $10 million purse.

The concept is relatively simple: Two of the company's seven-horsepower (five kilowatt) disc-shaped DC electric motors are bolted onto the rear wheels of the host car, connected by cables to a controller, battery charger and 4.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack in the trunk. The system, adding approximately 200 pounds to the car and taking up 20 percent of trunk space, acts as range extender. The motors do not drive the car, but kick in to provide a power boost between 15 and 60 miles per hour. Regenerative braking helps keep the batteries charged.

There are several companies converting Priuses and other hybrids to plug-in status, but Poulsen may be the only contender starting with ordinary gasoline cars. For $10,000, for instance, HyMotion will turn your ordinary Prius into a 100-mpg plug-in with a five-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

Poulsen installation is not a do-it-yourself operation, but an authorized dealer can accomplish it in as little as four hours. If the system works as advertised, a 30-mile-per-gallon car will be raised to 55 mpg.

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It may come as a surprise to learn that the meat industry contributes 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transportation sector. It's true, and you can find the details in a 2006 United Nations report entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow."

This is not only because cows emit methane, which is a global warming gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but because of all the land use changes, the production of animal feed, the shipment of all that meat around the world, and other factors.

Given that reality, I found intriguing the idea that the meat industry can somehow "give back" with a product that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels. Green Earth Technologies' new automotive motor oil is "made with American-grown renewable animal fats....It takes three barrels of crude oil to make one barrel of motor oil, but it only takes one barrel of animal fat to produce one barrel of G-Oil," the company says.

I talked to Dr. Mat Zuckerman, GET's newly named president, about how it all works, and the rest of this story may not be for the squeamish. "We buy the fat from the rendering industry [which sells waste meat products as a base material for a wide variety of products], and we consider it a renewable resource that is also fully biodegradable," he said. "Motor oil is a base material plus additives, and by adjusting the additives you make products for different automotive applications. In this case we're using nanotechnology to substitute fats for petroleum distillates to make the base."

Here's the technical part: The saturated fats in animal products have molecular single-bond carbon chains that are similar to that of standard petroleum-based oils. "If you look at other bio-based fuels -- biodiesel, ethanol -- none are scaled to the raw material," Zuckerman said. "But we could supply the entire U.S. oil needs with the fat from 50,000 beef cattle a day that are already being killed in slaughterhouses." Each cow could produce 110 quarts of oil, he said.

It shouldn't be hard to find raw material. Zuckerman says that 50,000 cows are killed daily within 150 miles of where G-Oil is produced in the panhandle of Oklahoma. It's the fifth largest red meat slaughter area in the world.

G-Oil actually got written into a recent episode of CSI: NY. The plot revolved around the idea that a bio-based oil would attract flies, which in actual fact G-Oil does not do. I asked publicist Courtney Jacobs if, since the product is biodegradable, you could just pour it on the compost pile when it's lubricating life is over. "Let's put it this way," she said. "If a deer dies on your lawn it's going to create a brown spot for about a year, but then the grass will come back greener than ever. It won't be environmentally harmful, but it's still probably better to take it to a recycling center with other oils."

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The annual auto shows are usually an opportunity for the world's carmakers to put on the ritz, but these are straitened times. I've seen carmakers set up indoor off-road courses and let thrill-crazed journalists romp through them in mud-splattered Jeeps, but this was not one of those years.

Ford's Fusion Hybrid: a car of the future.

General Motors, whose CEO was in Washington begging for a $25 billion bailout, decided that it would not, after all, introduce its new Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac CTS Coupe at this week's Los Angeles Auto Show. GM is burning through $2 billion in cash a month, and could run out of money early next year. Its sales declined 45 percent in October.

Chrysler, also burning through billions, declined to showcase any new models in Los Angeles or hold the usual gala press conferences.

Ford, with sales down 18 percent this year, could afford to debut new models because it just earned $540 million selling the lion's share of its stake in Mazda. The 2010 Mustang may get the headlines, but probably more important to the future of the company are a pair of hybrid sedans, the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan.

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The Stirling heat engine was invented by a Scotsman in 1816, but that doesn't stop Dean Kamen from using this new-old technology to create a unique hybrid vehicle.

Dean Kamen is probably best known for the creation of the Segway personal transportation device. And when he talks, people tend to listen. In addition to the somewhat whimsical Segway, his New Hampshire-based company DEKA Research has invented numerous breakthrough medical devices, including the AutoSyringe (a wearable device that dispenses medications on schedule), and Hydroflex, an irrigation pump for laproscopy and other procedures. He's won numerous awards for his inventions, including the Global Humanitarian Action Award from the UN, and numerous honorary doctorates.

The Deka Revolt: Best of both worlds?

But the 2008 DEKA Revolt is something else again. The basic car is a 1999 or 2000 Think City, a plastic-bodied two-seat electric car built in Norway. The company was briefly owned by Ford (1999 to 2003), and the Kamen car dates from that era. Under the name Think Global, the now-independent company has been infused with new venture capital and is once again operating internationally from a base in Aurskog, Norway. It is now selling battery cars in Scandinavia and soon to the rest of Europe. A decision on the U.S. will be made next year.

Against this backdrop, Kamen said he contacted Think approximately a year ago with the idea of turning a small battery electric EV into a mild hybrid equipped with a rear-mounted Stirling engine. The Stirling, which works by heating and cooling pressurized gases, can run on a wide variety of fuels, including gasoline, E85 ethanol and other biofuels, propane, natural gas and methane.

The next thing he knew, Kamen says, a large crate arrived on his loading dock. Inside was a disassembled Think, which he retrofitted with a two-kilowatt Stirling engine (soon to be replaced with a much larger 10-kilowatt version), a small fuel tank, a custom-made 18.3-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack using Kokum America batteries, and a 55-horsepower Azure Dynamics electric motor.

After some head scratching at the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles-was the car a 2000 or a 2008? -- the car was finally registered as a brand-new 2008 DEKA Revolt and began running around Manchester, New Hampshire. And soon it was Dean Kamen's personal transportation.

The Stirling engine does not power the wheels; instead, it provides heat and defrosting and powers accessories to avoid depleting the batteries. And, even better, it can trickle-charge the battery pack so that the driving range can be greatly extended. At speeds below 40 miles per hour, Kamen said, the Stirling should be able to recharge the batteries at the same rate as they're being depleted. Getting stranded with dead batteries won't be a problem, either, because you can run the Stirling for a short while and recharge them.

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Van Jones talks in perfectly shaped sound bites, which is great when you're having him as a guest on your radio show.

The author of the new book The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems (HarperOne) alighted on my WPKN-FM show between engagements with Tavis Smiley, Fox News, CNN and the Colbert Report, and he sprayed bullet-point ideas like clips from an AK-47.

Jones, whose book made it onto the New York Times bestseller list through a well-coordinated media campaign, thinks the Obama administration should hit the ground running with Green New Deal programs that will achieve the three-in-one of combating global warming, jump-starting renewable energy and getting us out of the recession.

Jones wants to empower a Clean Energy Corps modeled on the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps to "retrofit America" by weatherizing millions of leaky homes, small businesses, schools and other public buildings. Like Sarah Palin, he invokes "Joe Sixpack," but he sees him "in a green hard hat installing windows and wielding a caulk gun."

The program would include volunteers, people in job training programs and permanent employment, too, and the recruits would come from every spectrum of society, including prison. Jones' Civic Justice Corps would give ex-offenders a new career and a green job.

"The Bush administration left us with a big mess," Jones told me. "We need solutions that solve a lot of problems all at once." The process of putting people to work installing solar panels and making wind turbines, he said, will "require thousands of contracts and millions of jobs -- producing billions of dollars in economic stimulus."

Jones notes wryly that the $700 billion bailout gives bipartisan endorsement to the idea of taking government handouts. If it's good enough for Citigroup, Wells Fargo and AIG...But Jones is somewhat wary of handing a blank check to the embattled auto industry unless it gets its priorities straight.

"The big dogs barking for bailout money has drowned out common sense," he said. "We've had too narrow a view of what to do with our industrial sector. We need to think about what we want to make in America. We should be using our Boeing-level engineering talent to manufacture wind turbines, which are made with 20 tons of steel and 8,000 parts. We should be making solar panels, hybrid buses and light rail cars."

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President-elect Barack Obama went into the Motor City's lion's den last year, speaking before a sold-out audience convened by the Detroit Economic Club. He told the assembled business and political leaders not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear.

"'For years," he said, "while foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American automakers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars....Here in Detroit, three giants of American industry are hemorrhaging jobs and profits as foreign competitors answer the rising global demand for fuel-efficient cars....The need to drastically change our energy policy is no longer a debatable proposition. It is not a question of whether, but how; not a question of if, but when. For the sake of our security, our economy, our jobs and our planet, the age of oil must end in our time."

Obama then described a plan to subsidize 10 percent of the Big Three's retiree health care costs (as much as $7 billion) if the companies would invest half of that savings in fuel-efficiency research. His alternative idea was $3 billion over 10 years to remake auto plants for a new generation of clean cars.

Obama wants a million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015, a plan that could be derailed by insufficient lithium-ion battery capacity by then. He has a 10-year, $150 billion renewable energy plan.

Felix Kramer of CalCars.org, an early and consistent voice for plug-in hybrids, thinks the Obama plan is achievable. "Scaling up to produce a million plug-in vehicles in six years is far less challenging than what auto industry achieved after Pearl Harbor, switching in a year from cars and trucks to tanks and planes," he said. "And supplying batteries for those vehicles is attainable, especially since we have good enough technology to get started now."

Kramer also likes Obama's plan to have half of all new federal new car purchases by 2012 all-electric or plug-in. "That firm commitment to purchase 30,000 or more vehicles annually will be welcome to carmakers gearing up to produce plug-ins. It won't be hard to deliver," he said.

All well and good. But none of the proposals Obama has put on the table so far, by themselves, will turn around the increasingly dire situation for American automakers, which have indeed let foreign companies take the lead in fuel efficiency. The automakers need immediate and concentrated help, and they need clear direction. It's hard to see how a GM/Chrysler merger--bringing together two companies with SUV-heavy product lines--is a clear answer.

It's a cliche to say that Obama has a lot on his plate. But he can't defer action on the auto industry for long. He clearly understands the issues, and the imperatives of a quick turnaround. The Senator from Illinois is proving adept at getting his transition team in place. Let's hope that putting the ailing automakers on a green path is a day one priority.

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Can you feel the electricity? There's a growing consensus that the next generation of automobiles will, to one degree or another, be powered by batteries. The most likely scenario is that a fling with plug-in hybrids will lead to a serious romance and eventually marriage to pure battery electrics. Yes, to make this sustainable we'll have to shift some of our electric grid from its current 50 percent dependence on coal power, but that is an achievable goal.

It may be that the batteries themselves will be harder. The marketplace has arrived at a consensus that the lithium-ion (li-ion) battery is the only real choice for the coming electric cars. But li-ion is also kind of problematic. Sony commercialized lightweight lithium-ion batteries for electronics in 1991; since then, most of us use them every day in laptops, mobile phones and other devices.

The Th!nk City: a 110-mile range.

The great advantage of li-ion (aside from the fact that it's relatively non-toxic) is that it has twice the energy density of, say, nickel-cadmium batteries. But what works great in your relatively coddled cellphone is a challenge in the automotive environment, where the batteries will have to withstand extremes of temperatures and go through really fast charging cycles. Li-ion has also had stability issues -- remember those Sony laptop fires? Well, that company just recalled 100,000 more laptop li-ions because of fire hazards.

I hear that some of the most interesting approaches to li-ion car batteries increase energy storage using the controversial engineering of tiny materials known as nanotechnology.

The li-ion contenders are mostly small companies contracting with automakers. Johnson Controls/Saft has worked on batteries for the Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid. A123 had been a frontrunner to deliver batteries for the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in, but it now appears that the contract is going to the South Korea-based LG Chem.

A bit of a wild card is Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel builds li-ions in a factory in Indiana using technology developed at the Argonne National Labs. "The company's new, highly reliable and safe batteries are designed to be lighter in weight, occupy less space, provide more power, more energy, and have a longer life than the nickel-metal-hydride batteries found in today's hybrid vehicles," Ener1 says. But it would say that, wouldn't it?

Since Korean technology is key here, Ener1 just bought a controlling interest in one of that country's biggest li-ion producers, Enertech International. In announcing the deal, CEO Charles Gassenheimer says he sees a potential market for automotive li-ion batteries at $20 to 30 billion, dwarfing the $7 billion spent annually on consumer electronics.

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Wouldn't it be great if you could buy a device on the Internet for, I don't know, $200, bolt it onto your car and enjoy an instant reduction in emissions and an increase in fuel economy?

Claims like that are as old as the hills. We've all heard about the 100-miles-per-gallon carburetor that "they" don't want you to have, and the scientist whose invention was mysteriously suppressed just as he was about to bring incredibly cheap people's power to the world (think Nikola Tesla).

The Blade: Looks good, doesn't it?

It's inevitable that when fuel prices zoomed up, these devices would see a revival. (Yes, I know gas has come down, but is anyone really happy with $3 a gallon?)

Free lunches are hard to come by, however. Popular Mechanics tested a bunch of "fuel savers" back in 2005 and concluded that absolutely none of them worked. One even started a fire. These devices use miracle magnets, vortex generators, ionizers and water injection. But the only thing they reduced, PM said, was the cash in your wallet.

And this brings us to the latest device, The Blade, which bolts on to the exhaust pipe. It's kind of cool looking in a retro way. Remember those chrome exhaust tips people put on their cars to create a fake hot rod? I've only seen pictures on the website, and I have no idea if the Brazil-sourced Blade actually works. But, given the history, I think caution might be in order.

Don't worry, though, because actress Laura Dern says it works. "Having a Blade on my hybrid car allows me to continue driving with the satisfaction that I am lowering my carbon footprint and burning less fuel," she says.

The Blade is definitely more credible than most. The company paid for independent testing by the respected Automotive Testing and Development Services (ATDS) in Canada. On a 2004 Honda Civic, the Blade allegedly achieved a 57 percent reduction in hydrocarbons, 14 percent in carbon monoxide, 34 percent in nitrogen oxides and six percent in carbon dioxide (the main global warming gas). And on the highway, the numbers show it achieving a five percent fuel economy improvement.

ATDS Vice President Lin Farmer, who conducted the tests, said the Blade "seemed to be doing something on the positive side." He pointed out, however, that the 2004 Civic is a very low-emission car (the numbers for emissions of hydrocarbons, for instance, ranged from 0.0010 without the Blade, to 0.0004 with it).

"It's possible that some of the large improvements in gases are due to test-to-test variability and the fact that we were working with such small numbers," Farmer said. He added, however, that the Blade "performed better than other devices we tested." And the fuel economy numbers impressed him.

William J. O'Brien founded parent company Sabertec in 2005, after he came across the Blade on a visit to Brazil in his role as a venture capitalist. He's a great talker, and I can't pretend to understand everything he said. Luckily, there's a You Tube video that lets you judge for yourself. Here's some of what he said to me when I asked him how a device bolted on to the tailpipe can increase fuel economy. It's unfortunately somewhat paraphrased, because he talks fast:

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"All this merger talk is very interesting," said a Chrysler executive who asked not to be identified. "There is certainly always a time when things like that make a lot of sense."

And this is that time. It would have been unthinkable as little as a year ago, but now it's all about the cash. GM, which lost $18.8 billion in the first six months of 2008, has $21 billion of it left on hand. With car sales in the basement, the company could run through that by the end of the second quarter.

Chrysler bid for cool last month was no less than three proposed EVs.

Chrysler's big asset right now is not its SUV-heavy product line: It's $11 billion in cash. GM's share price dipped below $5 in the wild flailings of the last week, and its market capitalization fell to a marginal $3.6 billion.

A billionaire could put the whole U.S. auto industry in his or her back pocket right now. As the Wall Street Journal reported, "At Friday's prices, someone with $8 billion or so lying around could have bought all the public stock in both companies [Ford and GM], and had change left over."

If Chrysler were to be merged with General Motors -- and it looks about 50-50 at this point -- they would create a rather lopsided company. Both entities are like luxury liners that didn't want to turn around when the SUV phenomenon started to go south. And when they did start to move, they both had the same green idea: series hybrids, in which a small gas engine acts as a generator to drive an electric motor (which is what turns the wheels).

GM was first with the ingenious Chevrolet Volt, which is due to be on the market by 2010, but then Chrysler, not to be outdone, said it had two cars just like it (a Jeep Wrangler and a Chrysler Town and Country minivan). As announced in September, the cars had huge lithium-ion battery packs. But the small gas engines are in the let's-look-around phase.

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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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