Run cars on green electricity, not natural gas

18 wheelers may also run on clean diesel blended with biodiesel.

this is directly related to the truck and engine costs which are extensive. I am seeing some dual fuel options I also like.

low sulphur diesel will expand with time bringing down the price.

In today's oil world people might think that a car that runs on something else than oil is better than it. Well this proves otherwise!

While green energy is the right choice for our cars and personal transportation, what about our semi trucks and commercial transportation? This is the same question Pickens presents us. Batteries and solar panels can't produce the power needed to propel the backbone of Americas social commerce, let alone compare to the diesel fuel it runs on right now (foreign oil).

Natural gas, while not the answer many want to embrace, might be the only answer in the near future to get America off foreign oil altogether in the next decade.

Cars that run on renewable fuels and 18 wheelers that run on natural gas from within our own boarders. Who has a more reasonable solution?

What a pity that this legacy of the combination of Laissez-Faire economics and a succession of lack of leadership in both corporate and public office that culminated in 'BUSH-NOMICS' for the past 8 yrs is still prevalent in this era about to usher in monumental CHANGE.
It just goes to show that the battle has not began yet. The Obama administration should be very wary of 'Greeks-Bearing-Gifts'. It's greedy dinosaur industrialist like T. Boone Pickens the new administration would have to dialogue with to turn those laudable ideas in to actuality.
I'm of the belief that eventually the yearning of the people will prevail.
The world can learn to interact with each other on a mundane level without the reintroduction of excessive greed that brought about the current crises.
Greed has often been used to buttress the need to 'create' wealth. But as we have seen one can't create wealth by just moving money around without actual productivity which has been lacking in America, Uk, and majority of industrialized world. The actual production was shipped off to Asia they said to maximize profit which saw factory closures and invariably turned the western economies into pure consumers at th mercy of producers in far away lands.
This needs to STOP!! The only way we as a world can sustain fair-play and avoid catastrophic and chaotic unrest is to ensure each and every nation attain self sufficiency in food production and create a new unique level of global interdependency between nations that is not based on greed but mutual understanding which fosters growth and eventually peace.

I want electric now and hydrogen fuel cell when the technology becomes completely feasible.

Natural gas isn't the solution either, as all have said. For obvious reasons.

It has to be electric. All the research geared towards renewable power, at least all that I've heard about, is designed to make electricity.

But I've not seen any designs for totally new cars. The vast majority of personal driving is commuting, or just running here & there. One, two people.

Where are the little bitty ones? One just big enough for me & the groceries? One that doesn't cost much to buy or run? BASIC transportation with economy in mind? Give me windshield washers, a heater & radio and I'm happy. One that will fit longways in a parallel parking spot?

Pickens is doing a bait and switch!!!

Read this:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm

and watch this:

http://zaproot.com/2008/07/truth-about-the-pickens-plan-zaproot-048/

Nice. The 'solution' is yet another limited resource.

chevy cars look evil!

I think it is a combination of a lot of alternatives, until we can catch up to the demand of solar witch is the best solution a combination of short term fuels is the next best thing.

Natural gas is obviously not the solution, its the electricity and any alternative fuel that does not produce CO2, nothing else should be in included, this is an example of just trying to get money isn't a good idea..greed is essential to ignorance...

From the article:

With the dramatic increase in oil prices earlier this year translating into higher prices at the gas pump in the United States, concerns over U.S. dependence on foreign oil are once again part of the national discussion on energy security," writes Jonathan G. Dorn in a recent Earth Policy Institute release, "Run Cars on Green Electricity, Not Natural Gas.". "Combined with the growing understanding that carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are driving global climate change, the debate is now focused on how to restructure the U.S. transport system to solve these two problems. While the idea of running U.S. vehicles on natural gas has lately received a great deal of attention, powering our cars with green electricity is a more sensible option on all fronts—national security, efficiency, climate stabilization, and economics."

Having a fleet of natural gas—powered vehicles (NGVs) would simply replace U.S. dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on natural gas, another fossil fuel. The United States has scarcely 3 percent of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, yet even without the increased demand that would result from an NGV fleet, the country already consumes nearly a quarter of the world’s natural gas. A better investment is one that supports a fleet of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), such as the Chevy Volt slated for sale in 2010, which can use the existing electric infrastructure. With today’s energy mix, PHEVs running on electricity from the grid are nearly three times more efficient than NGVs on a "well-to-wheel" basis—that is, when considering the full life cycle of the energy source, from fuel extraction to combustion to vehicle propulsion. This is because internal combustion engines, such as those used in natural gas vehicles and in today’s gas-powered automobile fleet, are incredibly inefficient. (See additional data.)

This important fact seems to have escaped T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oil tycoon from Texas who is now promoting a plan to replace natural gas in the electric power sector with wind-generated electricity and use the freed up natural gas to power a fleet of NGVs. Burning natural gas in a new combined cycle power plant is three times as efficient as burning natural gas in a car. Even including electrical losses from transmission, distribution, and battery charging, running a car on electricity from a natural gas power plant is more than twice as efficient.

Under normal driving conditions, well-to-wheel carbon dioxide emissions for vehicles running on electricity from natural gas—fired power plants are one fourth as high as emissions from cars directly burning natural gas. Since a PHEV operating in electric-only mode has no tailpipe emissions, electrifying transport would move the majority of carbon emissions from millions of vehicles to centralized electricity-generating plants, greatly simplifying the task of controlling emissions.

On economics, driving with electricity is far cheaper than driving with gasoline or natural gas. The average new U.S. car can travel roughly 30 miles on a gallon of gasoline, which cost $3.91 in July 2008 (the latest date for which comparable price data for natural gas is available). Traveling the same distance with natural gas cost around $2.51, while with electricity, using the existing electrical generation mix, it cost around 73¢.

Choosing natural gas to power our vehicles would send the United States down the same expensive and inefficient path that created our addiction to foreign oil and our dependence on a resource that will ultimately run out. Choosing green electricity can take us in a new direction—one that leads to improved energy security and a stabilizing climate. For full report, see

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update79.htm.