My university had a "tech day" on Oct. 21, 2005.

One of the cars displayed was a Focus powered with fuel cells.

When I was at the Dearborn "Experience," there was a 10 cylinder ICE designed to use hydrogen.

What other technologies are currently being explored?

'06 FEH 2WD "Sainte Marie"

Did those cars actually work?

Other technolgies that make your transportation needs less oil-dependent:

- drive less
- drive slower
- look ahead
- compressed air engines
- biodiesel engines
- plug-in hybrids
- diesel hybrids
- compressed natural gas engines
- ethanol engines
- live closer to your job
- bycicles
- public transportation
- walking
- combining small trips into one bigger one
- tele-commute

As you can see, there are loads of ways of attacking the problem :-)

The fuel cell Focus did. It was driven to "tech day."

The 10-cylinder hydrogen engine was on display - not in a vehicle. It's was a big, old thing (as you might imagine). Is there a vehicle somewhere on the Ford proving grounds with one in it? Maybe.

'06 FEH 2WD "Sainte Marie"

Just a few random rants of mine on the issue of oil conservation:

I know there are some compressed-air hybrids in the works... I believe ford has one that has an extra set of valves on each cylinder, turning the engine into a big compressor during coasting, followed by using the compressed air to "restart" the engine from a stop. Definitely a clever idea for a purely mechanical hybrid system.

I think this is where the greatest potential is. Plugin-hybrid diesels. Short trips can run off all electric, longer ones can use the diesel engine, with a large portion of biofuel in it.

This won't really help much with the problem of oil consumption, seeing as natural gas is predicted to peak around the same time as oil. Sooner if we were to switch a large portion of cars to run either on natural gas or hydrogen derived from it. I say we're better off using the natural gas to build clean power plants.

Ultimately, telecommuting will probably be the most significant change. In the LA area in particular, the main problem is the fact that there are too many cars. More people telecommuting would mean less overall driving, and would free up the roads so necessary driving could be done at decent speeds.

Eaton Corp, a large manufacturer of big truck transmissions, has developed a compressed oil accumulator for use in stop-and-go trucks, like garbage haulers.

It surprises me that other large fleets that have similar issues, like the postal service, are not investigating solutions -please correct me if I'm wrong- to the problem of ultra short stop and go driving.