It just bothers me that we are spending MILLIONS/BILLIONS of dollars trying to develop alternative fuels from natural resources when that same amount of money could be invested into battery/solar cell development, and our energy needs could be solved FOREVER!!!
-E85 will not work. (made from food, we'd need to use 75% of our nation's farmland to produce enough energy to supply our nation)
-Coal will not work. (Natural resource that will eventually run out)
-Oil will not work (fossil fuel that will run out, we send money to enemy nations)
-Hydrogren cars will not work (still need lots of electricity to create H2, hydrogen is a poor way to store energy (see my above post))
-Biodiesel, cars that run off cooking oil, etc....
None of these are a long term solution to our nations energy policy! Sure, they can be used as fuel which helps slightly reduce demand for oil, but each and every one has drawbacks. Pooring tons of money into development of these fuels is a waste of money, and takes away time and money from research and development of batteries and solar cells to produce electricity. These are the future!
I agree that American automakers should be doing everything in their power to raise the efficiency of gasoline powered cars. But I disagree about the 100mpg car comment. Sure, US automakers could probably build a car that gets 100mpg in the near future. But why aren't they being produced??
Well, how about Mach 5 airliners. Can we build a Mach 5 airliner. Of course we can. I could design one for you. It would cost an incredible amount of money to build, it would cost an incredible amount of money to fuel, it would have terrible range... Same goes with this 100mpg car. We could probably build one, but it would cost so much that it would not be practical.
For instance, to build a 100mpg car, it would have to be VERY lightweight. Lightweight material would generally translate to being weaker. Now you have a problem if the car crashes. The solution to this would be use lightweight material that is strong. But that would cost A LOT! This is your problem. The same is true for any component we analyze (aerodynamic efficiency, weight efficiency, engine efficiency, etc...) To get these cars more efficient would make the car cost more, and less practical for use.
Engines are actually pretty efficient. No matter how much you increase the efficiency of the engine, energy is still being converted to heat, and the overall entropy is increasing. Plain and simple. We will eventually reach the upper bound for engine efficiency. Then it is dependent upon more clever techniques to increase the MPG, and these are even tougher (reduce weight, change the aerodynamic shape of the car, etc..)
Anyway... US automakers should do their best to increase the MPG of their automobiles. But just realize that by increasing the MPG, there are trade offs such as strength, size, range, and especially COST.
We should stop investing in these alternative energy sources like E85, coal, hydrogen, cooking oil,..., and start investing in battery development and solar cell devleopment.