Natural Gas and electic cars - how long before replacing oil/gasoline engines?

Question

Since the first natural gas and alternative energy (non-ethanol, which is a wasteful fuel) powered automobiles were first used - how long will it be from today when we can say there are no more gasoline powered vehicles?

Answer 1

If we had nuclear power, I would buy an electric car right away.

Today, electric cars just use coal to recharge the batteries. Not a very good trade off.

Answer 2

It could be done very easily right now. But look around you. You know there is an issue with a shortage of oil right? Everyone sees the gas prices going higher, yet how many people do you see on the road every single day, 1 single person, all by themselves, driving a brand spanking new escalade, f250, dodge ram hemi, 5000-6000lbs of steel with a 350-400hp engine getting <20mpg to haul the bone crushing weight of (1) person and their ipod with a mocha latte. People are inconsiderate, they dont care about tomorrow, no matter how many hemp t-shirts they own. If they REALLY cared, they WOULD recycle, and carpool, or ride a bike, or buy a more fuel efficient car, or the thousands of other things that they know they should do to support the mudball they live on.

But they dont. People in general are lazy, complacent and will wait until the very last drop of oil on the planet has been consumed by some 35 year old soccer mom from san diego so she can take her precious snowflake to cheerleading practice. Then when people can't go to starbucks and they actually have to walk their every growing a$$ down to starbucks for their daily mochafrappalatachino it will suddenly dawn on them what all those commercials were about for the last decade.

Answer 3

It'll be decades before we can phase out gas cars entirely.  Hopefully, that process starts soon with the implementation of electric vehicles.  

Electric cars are, in my opinion, the best option for the near future.  The electricity for these cars will be generated by power plants.  Hopefully, instead of burning coal, we can start switching to renewable energy sources to generate this electricity.

Answer 4

Internal combustion engines vs. electrically excited motors for propulsion has been the war from antiquity. The direct consequence of oil's predominance has been one of evil throughout it's maturation.Given the climate that predominated the times, it was a tug of war as to what would (who would) dominate. If Tesla's proven facts where allowed to mature,the world would not be in such a terrible state. In Fact-free energy for all would be the norm! We would be exploring beyond our closest Galaxy's!

Answer 5

when people become more educated and understand that energy has to come from somewhere.  Where's the energy gonna come from for electric cars.  The only source right now that is abundant enough is the burning of fossil fuels, so that alleviates no problem.  Natural gas still gives off green house gas but it can be produced in small quantities from garbage, so once again it is a resource that has limited quantities.    Same with hydrogen technology, you have to use energy to get the hydrogen, and like i said the only resource available enough to do that on a wide scale is fossil fuels.  We can't burn coal to produce hydrogen from hydrolysis.  That doesn't help anything, in fact it is worse because of energy transformation losses.  We need to base our energy off of other energy as in solar, wind, nuclear, etc.  first before we can think implement this technology on a wide scale

Right now we need to be concerned with what we have.  Conventional engines are by far not as efficient as they should be.  Smaller displacement, coupled with high compression, turbo's, direct injection, diesel are tools we need to implement to save gas.  Also hybrid technology is another useful efficiency tool we need to use.  It uses the energy from the car slowing and can store it and then use it for forward motion later.  Using these technologies we should be able to boost efficiencies close or over 50%

Answer 6

I think there will always be some gas powered cars around.  Look at all the people who like to collect classic cars!

But as far as the vast majority of cars being replaced with electric cars or, to a lesser degree, nat. gas cars, I think we're looking at a minimum of 20 years.  I believe Chevy is supposed to come out with the first plugin electric hybrid in the next year or two, so there's not really any of these types of vehicles out there right now even if you wanted to get one now.  Hopefully the auto makers will get their heads together soon and start mass producing some of these types of vehicles.