By: Liane Yvkoff
izmoautocontent

Fueling your hydrogen car with a glass of water may make for good headlines, but it’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Unless we want "scorched earth policy" to be the U.S.’s new energy policy, manufacturers will have to figure out a way to reduce carbon emissions sooner as opposed to later. This doesn’t mean that you have to learn to love the Prius—new eco-vehicles are emerging on the horizon will make it easy to go green.

Fueled by consumer demand, government regulations, and profit-hungry investors, the future for green vehicles has never been brighter. To ease the transition to clean, manufacturers are adapting their current fleets with electric, hybrid and flex-fuel engines. However, upstart carmakers have taken the clean slate approach to designing a green car. The only problem for the consumer is figuring out which flavor green suits them best.

Next generation biofuels
Ethanol may have the early mover’s advantage when it comes to biofuels, but the race isn’t over yet. Butanol is emerging as a dark horse in the field. Butanol is a four-carbon alcohol that is currently used as an industrial solvent. But it can also fuel a car.

Like ethanol, butanol is a renewable source of energy that can be made from any high-sugar content biomass--such as corn, sugarcane, or beets. When burned in a car, it emits significantly fewer pollutants than gasoline and introduces no new carbon into the atmosphere. But butanol has benefits over ethanol. For starters, it is less corrosive and evaporative, so it can be transported through existing refinery pipelines, whereas ethanol must be trucked from refineries to major fuel distribution stations. Butanol also has a higher energy content than ethanol, which means you can go further on a tank.

With lower emissions, renewable crops, and the ability to power cars with minimal or no modifications to your current car, butanol seems poised to be the next big thing. Backed by British Petrolium and Dupont with many clean-tech start-ups nipping at their heels, butanol should be available at the pumps within this decade. The only challenge will be producing enough to meet the world’s insatiable demand without competing with the food market.

Fuel-cells
If you’ve heard about hydrogen-powered vehicles, then you’ve heard about fuel cells. Fuel cell vehicles (FCV) have electric engines, but instead of plugging a car into an outlet at night to charge a battery, they burn hydrogen to produce energy.

FCVs can be fueled with pure hydrogen or a hydrogen-rich fuel, such as natural gas, methane, or gasoline--combined with a reformer--that converts into hydrogen. Hydrogen is touted as the holy grail of eco-vehicles. It’s abundantly available on Earth, and when burned emits only water. However, creating hydrogen in a clean way is an expensive process. Manufacturers are racing to develop advanced technologies that reduce the cost of creating hydrogen. Wanting to prove that you can have your cake and eat it too, GM is showcasing its hydrogen-fueled SUV, the Sequel. BMW and Honda have already introduced FCV prototypes to the market, and Honda is street-testing theirs along with their home hydrogen fueling stations. BMW is set to begin production in 2008 and will lease their vehicles to one or two hundred well-heeled customers, many of them rumored to be in California. But don’t go clearing space in your garage for a hydrogen tank-- it’s unclear when they’ll be available to the general consumer.

Where are we on the electric car?
A lot of fuss has been made about the electric car and its premature demise. But not long after its electric engine has gone cold, we’re seeing their rebirth on the road. And what a phoenix it is.

The new breed of electric cars couldn’t be more different than its predecessors. Engineered with driving and performance in mind, the Tesla Roadster goes from 0 to 60 in under four seconds, and has a range of 245 miles per charge. And it wasn’t enough to replace the internal combustion engine with an electric battery--Aptera redesigned their car from the wheels up, losing one along the way. To achieve maximum efficiency, Aptera engineered their car using lightweight but strong space-age composite materials and molded its shape using computational fluid dynamics. This means that while the Aptera will turn heads, it won’t be at the gas station—the all electric model gets 120 miles per charge and the hybrid model achieves 300 mpg.

Deep-pocketed investors and private equity firms are placing some big bets on these electric car manufacturers, which means that this time major car manufacturers won’t be able to pull the plug.