Their importance is not overrated at all as humanity has already exhausted half of the worlds oil reserves and it will not only become more and more expensive to extract smaller and smaller amounts of oil, but it will definitely come to its end one day. Unfortunately our economy now seems to be so dependent on gasoline that even if we switch to alternative fuel sources, and the sooner we do that the better for everyone, it might still not be enough to save our lives.

Not being one of the major alternative fuel sources for cars, solar power is actually a very useful one and whats more it will always be available for us to use. The main application of solar power is in our houses where with a few solar panels we can provide all the heating and the hot water we will need. Apart from that there are other ways also of getting an entire house powered and running only using alternative fuel sources, although it is still an expensive option.

A large step towards switching to alternative fuel sources were the Hybrid cars. Technically they dont actually use alternative fuel sources, but they have found a way to optimize gas consumption to the unbelievable 50 miles per gallon or even more with the use of conventional gasoline. And thinking realistically this is way better than burning alternative, but still inefficient, fuels such as vegetable oils, Biodiesel, ethanol etc. of course those vehicles powered by alternative fuels free us from the dependence on oil, but they still pollute the environment with the smoke coming out of the exhausts. That is the main reason it doesnt make any sense to me. Why should we switch from one thing to another if the second one is not going to be any better than the first?

Hydrogen and electricity seem to be the two most promising alternatives for fueling our future. They are very closely related as hydrogen is a highly efficient power storage option, and stored in the form of hydrogen in the car, the power is, when needed, being converted in electricity. In this way constructors avoid the need of huge and heavy batteries to store the energy. Losing the batteries on its turn, means that the car can be lighter and thus much more efficient and easier to run and maintain. These two alternative fuel sources might become the long awaited solution for the worlds fuel problems; however they need to be perfected first.