I think (as a former Oil Man) that we'll see electric vehicles charged by solar making significant inroads in the next ten years.

Electric motors smaller than a fist for model airplanes can exceed 3 HP, very efficiently...and not just from extremely high RPMs and low torque, but in a usable 8-10K RPMs with quite a lot of torque. Solar cell technology is there, but volume production hasn't yet brought prices down to a competitive level.

It's coming... and solar energy isn't new - the Sun is the source for all energy.

"extremely high RPMs and low torque, but in a usable 8-10K RPMs "
THREAD DRIFT - Pet Peeve
RPM - RevolutionS Per Minute - is already plural (the S) so "RPMS" is redundant and incorrect; it must (always) be RPM - a singular plural. Please don't help spread this grammatical error.
Thanks. G (for Grammarian)

And to think I used to be an editor...

And G is from Texas, you would think Boston or somewhere like that.

"note the emoticons" he he

You guys are all so awsome. Maybe I'm just too suspecious but I haven't seen the word "greed" mentioned. I remeber in the 70's they were telling us that the oil was going to run out. That justified going from 30 cents a gallon to a buck. Now they've brought us to $3 so we are all hoping it will go down to $2 (remeber an eon ago, last year, when we all thought $2 was outrageous? I believe the reason we haven't seen any advancement in solar, hydrogen or any other alternative is the simple fact that those that control oil don't yet control what the alternatives will be. And it's not the U.S. or Canada because if it was we would be welcoming mining the oil fields in Canada and encouraging the oilification (who says I can't invent my own words?)of the huge coal fields in Montana. Either of these alternatives I believe could make us independant of the rest of the worlds oil. And how about the oil companies that get all of their oil from the U.S. (Marathon is one I think), If greed isn't a factor then why wouldn't they keep their prices down since they arent' buying oil at $70/barrell but they are still charging the "non-fixed" price at the pump! Lets see, I control the cost of the raw material so I'll just tell everyone that it's costing me so much per unit and that way they don't have to know that I'm really just greedy. We all need to learn a lesson from Mondays boycott by our Mexican friends, If we all just decided to do nothing for one day i.e. no driving for any purpose except an emergency what would they do with all the millions of gallons of oil they didn't sell? Now if we could just get 3 billion people to co-operate, seems that might be the problem, we're all looking out for good ol number 1. I guess that doesn't make me any better than the oil company executive. Ah, here's an idea, "come Lord Jesus"!

"in the 70's they were telling us that the oil was going to run out"

"THEY" were OUR elected representatives, not the Oil Guys. It ws that same era when an oil executive spoke this truism "There's no shortage of oil; there's a shortage of cheap oil". Move Uncle Sam out of the picture and prices will be cut in half. How about the $.40 to $.65 per gallon tax WE levied on ourselves - most of which does NOT go to highways?