cars of the future... hybrids, electric etc.?

well, Hybrids in the near future, then electric, then Hydrogen

The future is in fully electric cars that you plug in at home, at work, and you change the battery at what is today a gas station. Hybrids still use gasoline, which is incredibly inefficient, produces tons of carbon, and cements our reliance on foreign regimes that are not always friendly.

Hydrogen fuel cells use more clean atoms than they produce.

Biodiesel is not really much better than gasoline - and it can threaten food prices/supply.

Go to Better Place or TED.com and see Shai Agassi's 15 minute clip for the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Electric vehicles are ready NOW, they have a range of 120 miles, go as fast as it's legal to go (100 mph, anyone?), and are affordable as long as you don't buy the battery (you lease that). Better Place is building you an infrastructure now - in No CA, Hawaii, Denmark, Israel and Australia.

Stay tuned - this will be your future.

The future is electric cars fueling (charging) at night on what is now idle lost electricity from the baseline generation plants that have to run nearly 100% 24/7 whether people are using or not using, so it will make our existing infrastructure more efficient day and night. Right now most of that surplus electricity is shot into the ground because they have to maintain 60 hertz without interrupting the pace and heat of the plant, any range of temperature change can cause expensive water leaks, so it's cheaper to keep it constant not to mention a requirement right down to national security to have electricity ready at a moment's notice.

Ideally? Less cars. It's not that cars are bad, per se. It's that we've created an automobile culture that forces car ownership if you are to have any economic freedom. We live in a world of suburbs where it's impossible to get anywhere without a car. We are enslaved to the car. No wonder turning 16 is a such a big deal - it means you can drive and are no longer dependent on someone for every aspect of your life.

The ideal transit of the future will be walking. We'll do away with suburbs and live in integrated neighbourhoods where most of the basic necessities are within walking distance. Larger distances will be covered by bikes and efficient public transit.

And yes, before someone screams about how the bus can't do bla bla bla bla, there will be cars. There will be less cars, because there's other options. Most families will only need one car (and they'll save tons of money doing it). These cars will be used for things where public transit can't go - the cottage, large loads of groceries, farms, etc. Most likely, these cars will be electric cars charged by solar panels (not on the car though).

Hybrids may have some immediate future but there is more economies to be had with fully electric vehicles.

My first thought is to include electric bicycles and motorcycles into your list. Bicycles are currently used for transportation by a huge number of people. It is just not so common in the US. In the netherlands they are creating their transportation system around the knowledge that most people will commute by bicycle to the electric trains. Electric bicycles especially with the new variable gearing will be a good match for this.

Motorcycles are not only two wheeled open vehicles. Due to the nature of the laws in the US Three wheeled vehicles even if they are considered closed are considered motorcycles. Many up and coming electric vehicle manufacturers like "Zap" are using these laws to create less expensive electric vehicles.

If the segway ever becomes street or sidewalk legal we would have another form of transportation.

Many of these people movers seem to be limited by battery technology but taking a clue from electric trains and buses people movers with induction pickups may revolutionize electric vehicle solutions and require no batteries. Tesla suggested that power could be transmitted or picked up by vehicles. For some this is also a tempting possibility.

Another consideration is the possibility of a different ownership paridgm. Several companies (like flex and zip cars) allow you to rent cars by the hour that are distributed throughout neighborhoods. For some this eliminates the need for ownership.

One of the most exciting possibilities for the future is electric powered flight. The military are also very interested in this as high altitude surveillance that may replace satellites. Solar photovoltaic panels may not work so well on cars but high above the clouds the wings and body of a plane could be a better platform.

Others may tell you about the potential for small nuclear reactors to be more portable and useful in vehicles. I am not entirely sure that this would be a bright future. Someday we may have fusion reactors that will have far less potential for hazardous waste. Then we might truly have a vehicle that "runs on water."1

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I imagine we will see a resurgence in electric cars. This time they will be improved. Next year, there's supposed to be the new Chevy Volt which operates on laptop batteries. I would love to see hydrogen become cheaper so more people will buy cars that run off hydrogen. Also, the French invented the compressed air car. Those are being distributed right now.

How about gasoline and diesel cars running on synthetic gasoline and diesel made by gasification and pyrolysis of biomass with the charcoal byproduct sequestering carbon as biochar. So far, it's the only carbon negative approach. All the other technologies such as hydrogen, and electric are at best carbon neutral and still present the carbon footprint of manufacturing as well as the carbon footprint of building an infrastructure whereas synthetic fuels can still be delivered in existing infrastructures and used in existing vehicles thereby avoiding the carbon footprint of additional manufacturing of cars and the footprint of building infrastructures aside from the gasification and FT synthesis plants themselves.

It may not seem as sexy as buying new cars but let's face it, hydrogen, electric, flex fuel, and hybrid are just marketing plates just as SUV, minivans, station wagons, tail fins and model years were in order to promote unnecessary growth in the automobile manufacturing industry. They're great for the economy and for employment but not really good for the environment. That's not to say that there wouldn't be any fuel cell or battery based electric vehicles since there isn't enough biomass to provide for all of our energy needs but if you did get rid of all the gas guzzlers, you would also be removing our only known method of removing carbon from the atmosphere on the same scale as they were put into the atmosphere in the first place.

Note, there's really no need for hydrogen and batteries because both are just methods of storing energy chemically. Research into more efficiently producing hydrogen from water with solar energy at Sandia Labs concluded with it being just as easy to store the solar energy as liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as synthetic methanol, gasoline and diesel as it would to store it as hydrogen.

The majority of energy used by cars is not from driving but from indirect energy costs such as that of manufacturing, maintenance and ultimate disposal. A lot of this is due to how we tend to change our vehicles not because we have to but because we want to. New types of cars only adds to the indirect energy usage of vehicles.

It may seem ironic but the current best hope for undoing the damage caused by our automobile industry is not to change the automobile but to change how the fuel is made. Eco friendly alternative vehicles will not be as green as eco friendly alternative sources of gasoline and diesel.

check with a mechanic asap

Hydrogen on demand run cars are here. It requires only water for fuel and has no pollution. Japan already has it for sale.

nitrogen fuel is an opition