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Gee, I just read that whole bit. Ya know, I agree with almost all of it! Especially about Hybrids in general. But remember this: it was only about 10 years ago that lots of people were running around fretting about how the hybrids would never work. By "never work", they didn't mean that they physically couldn't move, just that the solution wasn't optimal. But...hybrids are all over the place now. In fact, those nice, big Diesel-Electric locomotives going by you are...hybrids. For a lot of good reasons...like the acceleration problems with fuel cells.

It will simply get more expensive/annoying/societally unacceptable than the alternatives

Hell, I'm already annoyed!

You have just mentioned a host of technologies that are routinely lambasted by a lot of people. Yet you assert they are the 'optimal' ones. I merely asserted - in my first post - that a) things that people routinely say 'can't work' actually do work, and can be made to do so with the application of...thought! and that b) the real problem is a systems problem, i.e., which approach is 'optimal'? And I would also assert that the verdict - whatever it is - ain't anywhere near to being in. Energy independence? That is the goal. Do it like the military -- any way you can. But you have to know all the ways before you can make that decision. So, you look around. And after looking around, a rather large number of people have decided that...hydrogen based power production is promising. Is it..better than oil? Well, obviously, there's a lot of opinion about that. But we won't know until we try, and we haven't really begun to try. When $16 billion can go to Africa for 'AIDS awareness' but only $1.6 billion towards one branch of energy research, I know the government ain't trying too hard. But, the car companies seem to be, and it doesn't seem to all be political window dressing.

Ya know, I agree with almost all of it! Especially about Hybrids in general. But remember this: it was only about 10 years ago that lots of people were running around fretting about how the hybrids would never work. By "never work", they didn't mean that they physically couldn't move, just that the solution wasn't optimal. But...hybrids are all over the place now. In fact, those nice, big Diesel-Electric locomotives going by you are...hybrids. For a lot of good reasons...like the acceleration problems with fuel cells.

Uh, those diesels locomotives have always been hybrids (but not at all like the hybrid cars you are talking about), so using them as an example to disprove what people were saying ten years ago about a different transportation system doesn't make sense.

The question you refuse to address other than flippant dismissal is the actual per mile cost of all these schemes. Until it is so much cheaper to get electricity from nukes that nobody bothers to drill for oil anymore, gasoline will beat hydrogen.

quibble: I did not use the term 'optimal'. Solutions dont need to be optimal, just better than the alternatives.

For all the back and forth on this, nobody on this thread has shown a compelling reason why hydrogen would be better than gasoline. I could advocate boiled cats as an energy source, but is it worth studying? We wont know until we find out!

"hydrogen based power production is promising. Is it..better than oil? Well, obviously, there's a lot of opinion about that. But we won't know until we try, and we haven't really begun to try. "

We dont have to do research to know that liquid fuel in vehicles is more versatile, stable, easier and less expensive (and lower volume) to store than gaseous fuels. And so on.