Gasoline's fledgling rivals: the race to power your car

One alternative source of ethanol – sugar cane – is heavily used in Brazil. If the US lowered import barriers to sugar-cane-based ethanol, the fuel could play an important role, says Gal Luft, an analyst at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. Another possibility: methanol made from coal, he says.

Today, most methanol is made from natural gas. But because the US has vast coal reserves, it should do more to promote systems that turn coal into liquid fuels, Mr. Luft says. Montana and West Virginia are among several states developing plans for such systems. In Pennsylvania, systems to turn coal waste to diesel are already under way.

Methanol from coal could have a production cost of 40 to 64 cents a gallon, according to a 2003 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that compared seven systems – including some developed during the US synfuels heyday. The Methanol Institute, a Washington trade group, this spring pegged the fuel's wholesale cost at 76 cents a gallon.

Methanol can be used directly as a fuel. Indy race cars have used it for years. Or it could be a rich source of hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles. But there are hurdles that don't make hydrogen a near-term contender in the alternative-fuels race, including the steep cost of deploying hydrogen fueling stations nationwide and getting sufficiently cheap power to create hydrogen.

Methanol is also a key part of the process of making biodiesel. Production of biodiesel – a fuel that usually blends diesel with oil made from vegetable and animal fats – has soared to 75 million gallons in 2005, according to the National Biodiesel Board. But some analysts say it will have a niche role because, as with corn ethanol, the materials to make it are limited.

However, the considerable greenhouse gases released in coal-to-methanol production has environmentalists like Mr. Greene worried.

Still other fuels – like compressed natural gas, used in many city buses today, liquefied natural gas, used in some trucks, or even liquid petroleum gas – have shown promise. But expanded use of these fuels would require increased imports of oil and gas, analysts say. That's a potential problem for a nation already reliant on foreign sources.

Carbon-dioxide gas emissions from vehicles powered by such fuels would be lower than with gasoline, but still not eliminated, analysts point out.

"I see a race between three types of fuel – ethanol from cellulose and sugar cane, methanol from coal, and electricity from the wall outlet in your garage charging up plug-in hybrid cars," Luft says.

Ultimately, trends in the automotive world may be what decides the winning alternative fuel. At this stage, electricity is a strong contender. Earlier this month Toyota announced it will soon move beyond gas-electric hybrid designs to "plug-in" hybrids that tap the power grid to charge their batteries and go farther on electric power alone.

Using electricity to power vehicles is so efficient and cheap that, even if the juice flows from a mix of power plants including coal-fired boilers, it would still pollute less on a national basis than using gasoline, say Greene and others who have studied the issue.

Driving 20 to 40 miles a day on electricity stored in a modern lithium ion battery would be like driving on gasoline costing just 75 cents per gallon, Luft says.

"Electricity is cheaper, cleaner, and better performing than gasoline or any of the other fuels on every parameter," he says. "But that can only happen if manufacturers make plug-in hybrids so people can connect to the grid."

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