Scientic American had a great article on hybrids and various alternative fuel economies (e.g. hydrogen) in the May issue. I highly recommend the article.

It got me into a long Email discussion with a buddy on diesel vs gasoline, to the point I had to pull out my old thermo text book to explain efficiency differences between diesels and Otto cycle (gas) engines.

The current crop of hybrid cars are gasoline because Honda and Toyota were trying to deal with California emissions requirements and get the ridiculous Zero Emission Vehicle requirements quashed (ZEV is dumb, Low EV is realistic). Since Americans don't like diesels and fuel availabilty is iffy in places they went with gas. If you really want make the most efficient car it would be a diesel-electric hybrid.

Those of you waiting for the hydrogen economy to save us will have a very long wait. Hydrogen is a secondary fuel, not a primary energy source, and as a fuel it is hard to handle and not very dense.

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