~ Paul Kruger, www.reelectnoone.com

America's dependence on fossil fuels to move us around began with internal combustion powered cars. Fuel was cheap. We practically stole it from the Arabs until they wised up, now they control how much we pay for fuel.

Other fuels have been proposed, primarily by people with a vested interest in the source of those fuels, but each option leaves us burning fuel and tying us to someone else's infrastructure to obtain those fuels.

It is a basic law of physics. If we want to move something we have to input energy. Moving a car requires an input of energy, period. However physics does not care what we use as a source of energy.

Burning fuel is not very efficient with today's technologies. The internal combustion engine can only go so far. While it is true it has gone farther in other countries in terms of mileage than it has been allowed to go here in America, there are limits. Burning fuel is a dead end, not just because of the costs and inefficiencies of the technology, but because of the ecological consequences of exhaust emissions.

Hydrogen is hyped by the Bush administration to favor it's big oil interests. A hydrogen fueled car is just an electric car with a generator ( fuel cell ) that burns hydrogen. There are numerous problems with the concept, not the least of which is an almost total lack of places you can buy hydrogen fuel. I know of one I have personally seen on the West side of Washington DC near the RFK Stadium. Who would build this infrastructure to fuel our millions of hydrogen cars? Big Oil of course. We remain tied to the same people who helped bring us $4.00 per gallon fuel. Oh, and the hybrid is almost a hundred years old too. Google the Owen Magnetic, gas motor driving a generator to power the car, circa 1915.

Ethanol is only marginally better because we can at least pipe it through the existing infrastructure to deliver it to consumers and many present cars can already burn it with little modification. But current methods of production are consuming corn, the same corn we feed cows which drives up cost of milk and beef. We could import from Brazil, who use sugar cane, but there is an import tax on that, sponsored by big agribusiness which ruins any cost savings. The actual production of ethanol fuel consumes energy which only results in energy waste being shifted, in part, to the processing plants.

Hybrid electric cars have a place but are not the whole answer. Presently their cost exceeds conventional vehicles leaving them out of mainstream use, thus contributing little to abate the fuel crisis overall.

It is time to deliver pure plug in electric vehicles to the showroom floor. Part of the problem is negative education. People have been sold a bill of goods to delay delivery of electrics because their wide spread use would undermine oil company profits. Electric vehicles are not new...one of the early autos people could buy was the Baker Electric. Jay Leno owns and drives one today and it works as well as it did almost a 100 years ago.

Jay says of his Baker Electric, "My Baker Electric dates back nearly 100 years — and it's a late model. By then, the company had been selling electrics for more than a decade. Unlike other early cars, the Baker Electric needed no cranking, had no gasoline smell and was essentially maintenance-free. "

You plugged your Baker into a charger at home. No gas stations.

I'll not get into steam cars because, although there were some pretty cool creations early last century such as the Stanley Steamer and the very advanced Doble, they still burn fuel although they would burn just about anything.

We need to accept that a pure electric is a great alternative for the average American driver. Forget the negative propaganda from auto makers and their friends at big oil. Range is adequate today. It was adequate in the fleet of electrics that were driven every day in response to California's CARB mandate a few years back. That is until they were nearly all destroyed by the makers, over loud objections from those who got to drive them. Auto makers did everything they could to keep most of us in the dark about them because they did not want to make them...they could, they did, they just did not want to give Americans that option.

The key to bringing electrics to a show room near you is public and political pressure and a proper education campaign. Today's battery technologies won't provide all day driving for long trips in excess of a couple of hundred miles, but the fact is 90% or more of us never drive that far on an average day. A pure electric will meet 90% of the needs of 90% of all drivers. With the typical cost of electricity even the high performance Tesla Roadster gets an equivalent 135 miles per gallon when plugged into an ordinary household outlet over night. And it can blow the doors off most sports cars and drive 200+ miles on a charge. Drawback? It is a hand built $90,000 car, but it proves the technology is here now and for sale. More about this on my site www.reelectnoone.com.

How do you overcome the "range" issue? In my mind it is simple. Dealers who sell electrics include in the package, a "time-share" access to a gas hybrid. You need to take that occasional long trip or vacation, you park your electric at the dealer and borrow the gas hybrid for your trip. The rest of your driving days you steer away from all gas stations. Absent a "time-share" you can just rent a car for the trip. Many people already rent cars for longer trips to save wear and tear on their existing autos.

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