Yes, an environmental improvement, but you would still be left with a reciprocating piston engine and all the unreliability and high service costs that go along with that design.

My last vehicle with an archaic internal combustion engine went over 1,000,000 miles before I rebuilt it. That would indicate to me that they figured out the whole reciprocating explosion thing.
I’m not opposed to electric vehicles. When the price comes down and their reliability is proven I might consider one. Then again I probably only have maybe two new cars in my future so I doubt either of them will be electric.

?????? Been driving internal combustion engine vehicles for over 45 years and only had one break down, which had nothing to do with the engine. It was a faulty ECU, the engine control unit which is a motherboard that communicates with all the electronic sensors. A properly cared for internal combustion engine is very reliable, especially one that doesn’t have a bunch of unreliable electronic components like those found in an EV.

Next year.

No chance ever.

Back in about 1985 I rented a Lincoln Town Car from Hertz in Las Vegas. The whole dash instrument display was electronic, speedometer, gas gauge, all of it. It went black at night. I took it back and they gave me another car.

When I first visited The Villages in 2010 I rented a Nissan sedan at MCO from Enterprise. It had the first remote electronic key fob I had ever used. One day I stopped at the Belleview post office and the car's engine would not turn off. I tried everything I could think of and finally took it to the Enterprise agency in Sumter Landing. The guys there laughed at me but also could not get the engine to stop running. Last I saw of the car they had loaded it on a flat bed wrecker, engine still running. lol. I do not trust electronics.

I agree with you with many this conversation is like trying to have a conversation with sock puppets when it comes to discussions on EV or Hybrid vechicles

Do you mean the reciprocating piston engine that has been faithfully and reliably serving the world for the past 100 years? The engine that has powered tanks and other vehicles that won wars for us? The engine that is used in airplanes to safely get us airborne? Yes, that would be terrible. The problem with electric motors is that they take too long to charge. If you drive a long way and need to charge, you’ll need to stop for a minimal of several hours. If charging time can get reduced to minutes there might be a chance of EVs being successful. Even then, the entire electrical grid would need to be upgraded. How are we supposed to generate all of this additional electricity?

Less powerful than gasoline. I cannot remember the numbers but I recall that natural gas is only 80% as powerful as gasoline.

As has been pointed out in other posts, alternatives to petroleum-powered vehicles will become more available when they become as cheap and as reliable as petroleum-powered vehicles. That appears to be far in the future however.

Another technology that shows great promise is hydrogen power. A hydrogen-powered vehicle is essentially an EV but without the huge and expensive (to produce and to own) batteries. Instead the hydrogen is pumped into a fuel cell, and a reaction takes place that produces electricity to run the car. They have about the same range as battery-powered EVs and the running gear is pretty much the same. The difference is that you can fuel up a hydrogen-powered car in about four minutes vs. "X" length of time to charge a battery.

This technology already exists, albeit in infancy. Toyota makes a hydrogen-powered car (the Toyota Mirai) and a couple of other car manufacturers make one too. I don't think the infrastructure exists here yet, but it is available in a limited manner in California where you can fuel up with hydrogen at the some of the same stations that sell gasoline, and hydrogen tanker trucks are available to deliver it. I have no idea of the cost (probably a whole lot more at this stage than either petroleum - or battery - powered vehicles), but that should come down as the technology advances and infrastructure is adapted.

Best of all, absolutely emission-free.

Not likely to be around to see it but would be interesting to see which technology wins out

I don't know what that means. But, the cars I used from the Government motor pool had a natural gas tank and a gasoline tank. There was a switch on the dashboard where you could change from one tank to the other. I couldn't tell the difference in driving acceleration, speed, etc., between the 2 tanks. When I first drove one, I didn't even know that it had a natural gas tank.

Given that lack of infrastructure and the high cost of building the infrastructure, it is doubtful fuel cells will ever achieve wide use. I suspect they will be limited to trucks and busses which leave and return to the same facility each day. Also, the generation of hydrogen via electrolysis requires electricity and the end-to-end efficiency of the process is not as high as battery powered EVs when you consider all the aspects of producing, compressing, and transporting hydrogen. It is not correct to say that fuel cell vehicles are emission free as the process of producing hydrogen takes electricity and currently 60% of electricity in this country comes from gas and coal.

What the poster probably meant was that LNG has 70% of the energy density of gasoline (by volume). Maybe he meant CNG?? While it is an interesting factoid, I don't think it really matters all that much.

Gas Turbines dominate the air transportation sector. A bit different than reciprocating engines.