Transportation uses a lot of energy, so when you talk about alternate energy then alternate transportation becomes an important issue.

What forms of transportation would you consider in your situation to minimize energy consumption?

Would it be a petrol saving minicar?

Just in the news, Tata, an Indian carmaker just introduced the Nano, a minicar. The Nano is scheduled to sell in Europe for 1700 Euro ($2,500). The Nano seats five passengers, has four doors and has a 33HP motor. It is safety engineered.

How about a hybrid car or a fully electric car? The expensive battery is the soft spot here. Also, the cost of electricity has to come way down for the fully electric car.

How about a watercraft? Did you know that it takes the QE2 luxury liner one gallon of diesel to move 6 inches?

Railroads, buses, aircraft, zeppelins, rockets, "beam me up Scotty", whatever, feel free to contribute and make us think.

hybrids are a scam, huge amounts of acid rain and deforestatiin are caused in places like canada/alaska extracting the nickel and cadmium for the batteries and the copper for the coils.

the true electric cars tend to charge from coal fired power stations, producing more co2 than gasoline does.

also hhybrids are useless for fast driving. The motor only runs at low speeds, otherwise the petrol engine is used but it runs with an even lower fuel efficiency (mpg) than in a normal car due to the added weight and reduced size. In fact, something like 85% of all the savings made due to having a hybrid car are due to it switching off the engine while brake.

diesel if you ask me. the old ones - without the turbo. very cost effective (25km per 1 litre on a 2.0 litre engine is flippin' excellent)

yeah

my mum gets 50+ mpg from her Peauegot 107 (its a 1.2 i think)

I think the idea is to charge those from nuclear power stations over the long term. You are right, present batteries are not good enough. Something to put bright minds on then.

Presently diesels spew out cancer causing soot. Another thing that can be engineered to a minumum.

Hey I was watching this thing on NatGeo about this magnetic train system they're building in Europe that China ordered. Didn't finish watching it (fell asleep) but it seemed pretty cool

Ah yes, the MagLev. Magnetic Levitation. It's quite expensive and probably impractical, but that doesn't stop it from being cool.

Yeah, there is one of those running in Shanghai, connecting downtown with the airport at about one half airplane speeds. Not quite sure if I should call this a railroad or and air_road. I think it can do the 30 mile run in about 7 minutes.

Back local politicians who would propose extra lanes on the major throughways on which I drive my Chevy Silverado.

Diesel engines are by now as clean as petrol engines or cleaner. The cancer scare is just that, a scare created by greenies in order to pressure for higher taxes and more draconian anti-car regulation (especially against company cars, which appeals to the far left who can then sell the scheme as "not hitting the poor" as anyone knows only "rich people" get company cars).

The idea is NOT to get electric cars charged from nuclear power stations. Electric cars are another scam from the environmentalist movement.
Get everyone to use electric cars while at the same time trying to get every single means of producing electricity shut down.