Since the petroleum crisis in 1973, the automobile industry has exerted an effort toward promoting the research and development on alternative engines and fuels in consideration of dwindling oil resources.Stimulated by the gloomy oil problem, the industry is working out measures to deal with energy conservation through reviewing various alternative engines, which have been developed originally with an aim to emission control.Our expectations are, however, that there would be appeared in the near future no alternative type of engines worthy of replacing the existing internal-combustion engines.The fuels for automobile must have an excellent property on conveyance in supplies.On this point, there would be found no other better fuels than the current petroleum based fuels.For some years to come, we have to regard petroleum based fuel as the main post for automobile fuels.In this context, an effort should be made to deal with energy saving through automotive technology, while another effort should be made to develop alternative fuel without imposing greater changes on the existing engines, for example, blending of alcohol with gasoline.The coal resources, which still remain in a large quantity, should be utilized much more.The use of electric-powered vehicles should be a means for oil saving, the power of which can be charged with atomic-power or coal generated electricity.Inasmuch as battery charging still remains as a difficult problem, electric-powered vehicles will not increase greatly in the future.In addition, we cann't expect for increasing the utilization of coal and coal liquefied oil owing to their high cost.There should be also a difficulty in the utilization of hydrogen as an automobile fuel owing to troublesome carriage, though its resource exists in a limitless quantity.
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