Interesting forecast. Not very promising for hydrogen - which I think is accurate.

My response would be the same as James Woolsey. See my article at http://bioconversion.blogspot.com/2006/12/james-woolsey-on-biomass-conversion.html .

1 million cars by 2035 is not enough to justify the infrastructure expense. Considering that there are already an estimated 6 million flex-fuel cars on the U.S. highways today there will hardly be any cars around in 2035 that aren’t flex-fuel compatible. I say that because it will take 15 years to cycle the vehicles and infrastructure from non-flex-fuel to flex-fuel equipped (including flex-fuel hybrids and PHEV) and then another 15 years to cycle to the next generation – who knows what that will be.

Consider also that the infrastructure for ethanol, because of its miscibility with gasoline is pretty easy to transition compared with hydrogen. Also consider that the upgrade from current models to flex-fuel is $50-$200 in the production line vs. $2,000? for hybrid and lord only knows for hydrogen.

I agree with you that the current infrastructure is suitable for a transition to a fuel like ethanol, however even if US make ethanol of all grain harvested it will, with the efficiency of today, only supply about 16% of the car fuel demand. I see ethanol as a parenthes in history, as a bridge between the oil and a more sustainable fuel for a growing population the day when the oil price is taking off due to the lack in supply.

PHEVs (plug-in hybrid) is surely the way to go to keep the fuel consumption down. But it will most likely not be economical until the extra premium you will have to pay for the batteries will be a lot lower than today. With the sluggishness in the market (hybrids have commercially been around for 10 years but only made about 1.5% of new car sales in the US 2006), there are still a couple of decades before PHEVs can start to make an impact in the market.

There will always be need for some kind of fuel for people to be able to go longer distances, even though it would be more efficient to put the electricity in batteries. The shortage of oil in the future will forces us to find another fuel to fill up the PHEVs.

The cost for a hydrogen infrastructure is enormous, which is why there will only be 1 million on US roads in 2035, probably several of them PHEVs.

Whereas gas and diesel are made from hydrocarbons, ethanol and biodiesel can be made from carbohydrates AND hydrocarbons. Agricultural feedstocks are only one source - there are also forestry, urban waste, and fossil fuels as major categories. Therefore, ethanol is much more universal and potentially in greater abundance than fuels made from fossil sources.

As important, ethanol can be produced decentrally - which is a major problem with gasoline.

I think hydrogen will be an option at a later date. Hydrogen distributed via ethanol to be reformed at the fueling station assuming that it can be done cleanly and economically. Time will tell.

k first off i no and im sure alot of other people no to that all of the car indistry's have hundred's of fuel reesistent cars out there. and my only question is y dont u realese them oposed to making people pay thousend's of $'s cause your only loseing enployes and u would get more money for a patin.and i no very few people no about this but ill tell u anuff no that u have huvering cars

Robbie;
Your paranoid ravings about the conspiratorial behavior of the auto industry would be much more believable if it were expressed in something closer to the English language. As it stands, it's not only unbelievable, it nigh unintelligble.
Where are we going to get all of this hydrogen from? It's the most abundant element in the Universe, but it's not often found free on this planet. If we electrolyze water, and then react it to form water, the H-O bond energies will be the same. Since no energy transfer can be 100% efficient, electrolysis will be a net energy loser. My CRC Handbook is in work, so I'm not sure if a C-H bong is stronger or weaker than the O-H bond. We may have better luck actually creating a net energy release with organic materials.
Pontus - Plug-ins - I've had the same question since the 70's; How do they reduce energy consumption or pollution? Batteries need to be charged from somewhere. Right now in the US, that usually means a coal-fired generating station. So a plug-in electric car just moves the pollution from a tail-pipe to a smoke stack. Add in line loss (loss of electricity in tansmission due to what amounts to sub-atomic friction - it can be as high as 50%) and in real terms you have INCREASED energy consumption.
Am I missing something?

I agree with you Lamont, as the grid is feeded today you only move around the pollution with electric cars. PHEVs is a way to keep the consumption of fuel down, so we move away from the oil dependency due to the bumpy road of supply for the coming decades, and in general don’t have to ship it around and stress the environment.

When it comes to the overall energy consumption, I don’t think there is a chance to reduce it in the near future when it comes to transportation, more likely the other way around. We actually need to produce a lot more electricity in the future to get out of the oil pit, meaning moving toward hydrogen in the long run.

Since the renewable energy sources will not be able to keep pace, nuclear power is probably the best chance to build the bridge to a greener future, how strange it might sound. Then when we have the knowledge to better use the energy in solar power (and increased hydro- and wind power), we can hopefully start to phase out the fossil-fueled plants and then the nuclear plants. I wish of course there was another solution. Please let me know if you have one.

There is a fundamental problem with the idea of nuclear power leading us to an eventual green future where we have learned to utilize solar energy more efficiently.
I say solar only, because wind is a function of solar energy, since it's just the atmosphere attempting to equalize air pressure differentials created by the sun's uneven warming patterns. Even hydro is solar; how do you think that water gets up above sea level in order to flow down? The only non-solar form of "natural" energy I can think of would be tidal. But I digress, as usual.
The problem is that humans tend toward the most efficient use of their own personal energy. In socio-cultural terms, this is called "laziness". We are not going to throw off the very convenient use of hydrocarbons (which are also fundamentally "solar"), even in the face of impending catatrophe without some huge push from our social structure. If we eventually wind up with an allegedly "clean & safe" nuclear infrastructure, we wind ride that pony to the point of collapse as well. Some far-sighted individuals will point out that we will then have the opportunity to work on harnessing solar power effectively, but they will be marginalized as crack-pots by a socio-cultural structure that is functioning quite nicely under the nuclear model, thank you. Human cultures move from crisis to crisis. To date, none have shown the ability to learn from any prior crises that there may be some value in trying to avoid the next crisis before it is knocking on our door.
Ultimately, pollution that causes species-threatening impact is not an underlying problem, it is a symptom of such a problem. The underlying cause is that right now the Planet Earth is carrying a couple of billion humans beyond its rated capacity. There is a life-form imbalance. We impacting the Earth in a way that is fundamentally similar to some of the very earliest life-forms, anaerobic bacteria. These bacteria were wildly successful in the days when the atmosphere was a nasty soup of mostly methane and ammonia. They produced oxygen as a waste product. They produced so much of this waste product that evenually they created an environment that was toxic to themselves. Other life-forms, more complex and better able to take advantage of the modified environment, but no better at enlightened self-interest, filled the gap
The best possible outcome is that we're going to follow that model again. Alternately, we may just wipe all life off of the planet.

I agree with the notice..
They already have cars and also karts (soon F-1 cars) based on Hydrogen-fuel but the bigs company of petroleum/gasoline shut up with money everyone.