[CasearianDaoist]

I guess I agree with you. I still think that rather than electrical commuter cars there will be some sort of gradual shift form the current arrangement to hydrogen cars, with a series of "hybrid" solutions in between. People than live in and around the big cities often have a car precisely for the reason of getting out of the city and few can afford to own two cars. Also, driving in a place like NYC is hardly just commuting - you can burn more gas just driving around the city than getting here.

But you may be right.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Addition=addiction
Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to make and requires a lot of electrical power, among other items. Every time energy is reformed, some volume is taken away in the process. Low rank fuels like coal, oil shale, etc can suffer this loss and still be useful to society. It makes little sense (to me) to use a high rank fuel, like electricity or natural gas, to make hydrogen for automobile use.
I was thinking the other day about how quickly crude moved from $25 to $50/bbl. Sure, North America is blessed with a bounty of crude oil around Calgary-Edmonton, and further north (and where else are the Canadians going to sell this stuff)and because its of somewhat lower quality, it sells at a discount to traditional WTI. However if one bad bomb goes off anywhere in the middle east, you can bet the marketplace will bid this stuff up, too. I'd bet we'll see $100 crude in less than 10 years.