, Please 
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First, the major pressure from this issue is going to be within our lifetime and depending on different predictions, perhaps even within the decade. The problems with oil shortages are real and really frightening, and for some of the doomsday scenarios, you should google the term "peak oil".
Peak Oil is not when oil runs out. It's when oil production begins to slow down. Every economy in the world is based on growth. More population, more companies, more cars, more oil. We are still pumping out more oil and pumping it out faster to accommodate all these expansions. But, we will hit a peak in oil production, called "peak oil". Some say this will happen around 2030, some say 2008, some say it is already here, but most seem to agree it is at least a few decades off.
But the problems don't start when we run out of oil. They start when we reach Peak Oil. As the economy continues to expand, more power is needed and more cars hit the road. But suddenly, there is less oil available to meet rising demands. You know the rules of supply and demand, so it should be easy to see that after peak oil, the price of gas, oil, gas-based electricity, etc. will skyrocket.
Because oil touches virtually every facet of our economy, all sectors and all goods will have much higher prices and everything is going to get much harder economically. Most every product has a transportation cost factored into its price and all those prices will go way up, our economy will slow and things will get awful.
Unless, that is, our American politicians invoke some drastic changes to the way our economy (our cars and our power plants) generate power-- revolutionary and within the next 6 ... days. Honestly it would have to happen immediately or else it's already very late. But I doubt we are actually going to invoke any major changes until we've actually directly felt the effects.
But when that happens, we will be compelled to invoke changes and they will. With cars, there wont be one simple answer. There will actually be a combination of different types of fuel that cars will be running on that will all take up their own percentage of the cars on the road. Some will be biodiesel. But we could never power all cars on biodiesel because there simply isn't enough farmland. That which exists is needed for food and depending on the crop we use to get the oil (probably various but most likely soy), we probably wouldn't have enough acerage in the entire united states of america to power our cars. I say "probably" because I tried to do this calculation myself, and there is a very good chance I was off. But still, even if we converted half to 80% of all of our country over to farming for biodiesel, there just wouldn't be enough.
What's more, this would create problems around the world because if third world countries see a stronger market for their crops as fuel than as food they may be compelled to sell it instead of offer it to their own populace. Maybe. But those would probably be rare and isolated scenarios.
So biodiesel will be developed but it will only produce a small fraction of our cars.
Also, we are obviously going to still have to use oil in our next generation of cars, but mpg standards on regular cars will be way more strict and they will have to pollute much much less than they presently do. There will need to be laws requiring that only a certain amount can be sold that have low mileages and that as years go on less and less will be allowed. These, though much more expensive because of insane fuel costs, will still be one of the major cornerstones of the car fleet, even as it gets factored out of existence.
There will also be hydrogen powered (fuel cell) cars. But there will be even less of these then biodiesel because they would be extremely inconvenient. Hydrogen atoms are small (small as they get!) and can leak straight through perfectly airtight containers.
People fantasize about a hydrogen economy but realizing one would take a major major, major overhaul to our existing infrastructure. We can't put hydrogen in the old underground oil and gas pipelines stretching across our country without replacing tons of existing oil equipment. Presumably things like pressure gages, computer systems, and other materials used for oil would have to be replaced.
Also, per unit volume, hydrogen packs less power than oil or gas. A hydrogen fuel tank on a car would be many many times larger than a gas tank for the same distance, unless you were keeping the hydrogen stored at several thousand psi or as liquid hydrogen, then (if I remember correctly) it's closer to 2x the size for a tank, but that is unrealistically expensive and insane. Paying to keep hydrogen at such high pressure or at such low temperatures is just that much more expensive. Per unit weight hydrogen is great. The same weight of gasoline holds much less punch than the same weight hydrogen. But our economy functions by volume. By gallons of gas, by barrels of oil. Practically, the size of our fuel tanks, transportation and management of a fuel all primarily revolve around the volume of it and not the weight of it.
Adding to that, if we are to use giant fuel trucks to deliver hydrogen around the country like we do gas, we would need 20 times the amount of fuel trucks on the road to maintain everything.
All hydrogen would have to be created (where would you harvest it? It's the most simple element there is so it always mixes with something else). Around the world today, most hydrogen is produced by breaking down a fossil fuel, a hydrocarbon with hydrogen inside it like coal, oil, etc. 96% percent of hydrogen is produced by fossil fuels in the present day, and so having hydrogen cars wouldn't help us get off of oil. At least, that is the talking point everyone like to use, but if we transitioned over to hydrogen obviously that would change. The most famous example is electrolysis, where you basically fry water with electricity and it breaks the water back into hydrogen and oxygen. Obviously, there would be new plants that would do this and separate out the hydrogen and then send it around our country. Unless it gets produced right at the station where people would fill up with hydrogen. Then the car would just do the opposite combine the hydrogen back with oxygen to make water + electricity, which allows the car to run.
But for a while at least, these will be weak cars (can only go so far), and it will be inconvenient to get the fuel. And it would take a massive amount of electricity just to produce all this hydrogen (something on the level of doubling the amount of power plants in the country just for the hydrogen cars alone, if they were to power the car fleet). Where will this electricity come from? But still, the hydrogen fuel cell car will have to be a reality, but it will be a small portion of our cars.
Probably the single largest contingent of cars are going to be hybrid cars, which will run mostly on electricity or biodiesel or hydrogen (still electric), but there will be gas when it is needed. If our consumers would stop being idiots and demand 300 horsepower cars, a lot less gas would be necessary and hybrid cars would have an easier time becoming widespread. They are already here today, they have the muscle when needed but will rely mostly on electricity and drastically reduce the need for oil. Even though they use gas they will be a major, major contingent of the nation's car fleet and will greatly help reduce demand and ease the pain of high costs of oil.
Then there is the straight up pure electric car. Not a fuel cell car, but just a battery powered car. On many levels these will suck. They have weak engines and can only like 93 miles on one "load" of electricity. Not much but it's actually more than millions of people need to drive in a day. They will take hours to recharge so if you forgot to plug it in (yes, plug it in) overnight, you are out of luck the next morning. Batteries would have to be entirely replaced about every 20,000 miles and we would have to find creative ways to drive less. But they will not use fossil fuels and once the cars penetrate the market (which they will) they will become about the same price as any other car, but with a much, much, oh-so-much cheaper bill when it comes to fueling up. They will actually be a huge help though, much more than biodiesel.
But the electricity has to come from somewhere, whether we just use it for electrolysis for fuel cells or for straight battery powered electric cars. Nuclear power will have to be phased out entirely. If you factored government subsidies, waste management, plant maintenance back into the cost of nuclear power it would actually be very high. Nuclear power is not our future, no inexpensive solution for removing waste exists (but the fears that the plant will blow up are an exaggeration, they are very safe despite what people will tell you). Also for political reasons, if we are smart, we aren't going to use nuclear power. Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons are brother and sister, and from one technology, the other technology can and will be accessed.
Also, for the towering destruction of pollution caused by Coal Plants (also a fossil fuel which we will run out of in 200 years, a long time but shorter than we think), Coal will be out. So no coal, no oil and no nuclear for our power plants. What, then? Natural renewable sources. The strongest of these will likely be wind which is abundant and already penetrating the electricity market present day and expanding at a ridiculous pace (the industry grows by an insane 33% a year). Wind is going to catch up on its own accord, even without the urgent intervention that will be needed, so it should develop more quickly than solar power. But there will be plenty of each on a massive scale.
Also, geothermal energy (drilling down in the earth for undergrount heat), on the western half of our country around California and Nevada and several over places, is already used as a viable power source, and there is tons of it. Hawaii, which already gets 25% of all its power from geothermal thanks to the volcanic activity could expand further. Geothermal, wind, and solar will all produce the new electricity which will be the backbone of the car industry.
So, what saves us from the oil shortage? A combination of a few things happening at once. But the short answer would be: electricity.
Thats my view, and if you look at sources to check me on my assertions, you should see that most every claim above is backed up by a source which you can find on the internet.
Edited by glenstein, 27 January 2007 - 01:48 AM.
