[onemoreact]

It's the fuels that are in their infancy not the car's. Design a cheap energy efficient way to to turn cellulose into something close to gasoline and you will be able to make more money than Bill Gates. Theoretically it's possible, but nobody has gotten there yet.

[rbanffy]

After driving ethanol-running cars for more than 25 years, I must disagree. If you can't drive ethanol-running cars in your country, be assured it's not really a technical issue.

[onemoreact]

I often fill up with 10% ethanol gas which most cars can burn just fine, but the entire world's supply of ethanol is not enough to replace 10% of total demand with ethanol. We throw away enough feed-stock in the US to double world wide ethanol production, but it's simply not cost effective process it yet.

PS: It's not that far off though the US accounts for ~44% of the world’s gasoline consumption, but it's would take ~57% of the world's ethanol to switch every gas pump in the US to 10% ethanol.

[finnw]

> Design a cheap energy efficient way to to turn cellulose into something close to gasoline

The closest match is probably thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization)