Although gasoline does have a great deal of power per unit, trying to find it, getting it out of the ground, transporting it to a refinery, then further transporting it to our neighborhood station is becoming a burden. We are now having to explore in increasingly remote locations in order to find suitable drilling sites. Scientific endeavors to extricate oil from shale have not yet been fruitful. Drilling in the ocean to depths of 5 miles is not uncommon. Every year another supertanker is shown on the evening news spewing toxic crude oil.
Combustion engines are one of the leading causes of smog in the Rogue Valley and the world.
Since the first autos, people have been looking for alternative means to propel themselves. Steam was actually the first device used for propulsion. Later, a battery powered car whisked along at 3.5 miles per hour. The best thing about batteries at the time was that they did not tend to scare the horses like the noise of a gasoline engine. Because of gasoline's rapid advancement, electric cars hadn't received much attention.