This year marks the 100th anniversary of the automotive industry. What's the gasoline engine done for us? Well, until the advent of gridlock, we've been blessed with unrivaled mobility. On the other hand, the horseless carriage has also brought us such pleasantries as strip malls, suburbia, dependence on foreign oil imports, and a whopping pollution problem.

Even with catalytic converters and other pollution-control devices, the 193 million motor vehicles on U.S. roads spew forth enough carbon dioxide - the primary contributor to global warming - to turn us all into hothouse flowers. Gas-powered autos belch carbon monoxide and ground-level ozone, both poisonous. And they are one of the biggest sources of carcinogenic "particulates" - cited by the American Lung Association as a major cause of respiratory problems and premature death. That's not to mention sulfur dioxide, which turns rain into weak sulfuric acid, or nitrogen oxides, smog's main component.

With a growing number of vehicles on the road, something's got to give, and it may have to be the gasoline engine. "We're at the end of the oil era," says James MacKenzie, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. Although many dispute the actual date for the Armageddon of the auto's current cocktail of choice, alternatives to fossil fuel are many.

So What Are Our Choices?

Methanol (wood alcohol), ethanol (the stuff we drink), and methane (natural gas) all have what it takes to power a motor vehicle, and all release far fewer particulates. Alcohols and compressed methane are liquids at room temperature and can be used in existing engines, with some modification.

Like gasoline, however, these fuels create carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides. And since they burn cooler than gas, it takes more fuel to go the same distance. Fuel production is another headache. Methane and methanol come from coal, the quintessential polluting, non-renewable resource. Ethanol is made from grains better utilized as food.

Hydrogen is wonderfully clean fuel, releasing only water, electricity and heat; but as a gas it's too bulky; and liquid hydrogen requires such special handling that its widespread use seems unlikely. That may change very soon, as new hydrogen-electric hybrid technology hits the streets. Fuel cells, which resemble batteries, may be the best way to use hydrogen; unfortunately, the technology is in its infancy.

Many experts see electric vehicles (EVs) as our only real option: "You can't beat them when it comes to emissions. Nitrous oxides would be reduced anywhere from 30% to 70%, and greenhouse gases (CO, CO2 and ozone) would be reduced 95% to 99% below those of the cleanest car ever made. If you generate your electricity from the sun and the wind, driving an electric car is guilt-free," MacKenzie says.

EVs took a hit this May when The New York Times wrote up a Carnegie-Mellon study that concluded lead-based EV batteries such as those found in GM's electric auto - the Impact - would cause more pollution than the gas engines they're designed to replace. The story, widely distributed through the newswires, claimed that the amount of lead emitted from the Impact's tailpipes would more than offset the promised decrease in particulates, greenhouse gases and nitrogen oxides.

But what the Times readers never found out was that the study had been strongly criticized by the scientific community. Authors Lester Laze, Chris Hendricksen, and Francis McMichael assumed that EV battery production would require all-new lead, when in fact the lead-acid batteries used in conventional vehicles could be recycled. And for their model vehicle, Laze et al. used a 17-year-old prototype electric car, far below the Impact's technological level. They even got the Impact's technical specifications wrong.

Their assumption that all electric cars would have lead-acid batteries was also flawed. Actually, all sorts of batteries are in the works, ranging from a highly efficient sodium-sulfur battery to a promising zinc-air battery that delivers nearly the same miles-per-charge as a tank of gas and recharges in minutes. And finally, there is an advanced fiber-nickel-cadmium battery with excellent range that would cost less to operate per mile than a gasoline engine.

Despite significant problems with the study, it was cited in papers across the country. Rebuttals published in specialty magazines have attracted only a fraction of the attention.

Electric Cars Aren't New

Before World War I, more than a third of the vehicles on U.S. roads were electric. Only when gas-powered cars began to outdo the electrics in range did the industry abandon the battery buggies. A hundred years' investment in the care and feeding of gasoline engines has cultivated automakers reluctant to revive electrics. Amid environmental fears, the mood - in industry PR campaigns at least - has shifted. Still, the future of electric cars is uncertain because of the auto industry's continuing resistance to change.

The industry has been claiming that EVs are impossible to make, and that the cars wouldn't sell anyway. This argument was shaken by a series of test-drives on the prototype electric GM Impact. Designed for maximum efficiency, the Impact, which would sell for about $25,000, got rave reviews from testers as a fun car to drive. GM has been tooting its own horn about the Impact so loudly recently that it's easy to forget that the company brass never wanted it to work.

Shari Prange has her doubts. As co-owner of Electro Automotive in Bonny Doon, she has been selling kits allowing the conversion of conventional cars to lead-acid battery electrics since 1979. GM's grudging attitude comes as no surprise to her. "You see these fancy ads in magazines", she says, "with the CEO of GM going on about how his company is pointing the way to the future with the electric cars. That's crazy. Get him in a closed meeting with no reporters there, and all you'll hear is reasons not to make electric cars."