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Cash-For-Clunkers Reveals Weakness Among Detroit Brands

I'd rather send my money to Japan than to OPEC. (About the same amount of money over the lifetime of a small car, but only one recipient wants to blow us up. And no, we can't drill our own oil to solve the problem, we don't have anywhere near enough of the <$80/barrel stuff.)

I always said I'd buy American when they produced a reasonably priced car that got at least 40 mpg. Finally Ford makes the Fusion hybrid which does essentially that, so next time I'm in the car market, I'll definitely look at Ford. (Their Escape Hybrid isn't bad either).

Reasons to Love 3-Digit Oil

sharksm, I agree with your basic points (We shouldn't mandate XOM, BP, etc. to do or not do certain things, though they may do it on their own, and we should invest in alt. energy R&D and production).
But we can't drill our way out of this problem. We simply don't have enough oil in our control (ANWR, off-shore, etc) to raise production enough to lower prices. I'm sure eventually we'll drill there anyway., but let's save it for the real crisis yet to come.
And your original post suggested electric cars are expensive & unrealistic, which I disagree with. We are going to see an explosion of new cars (finally!) in the next 4 years - hybrids, PHEVs, BEVs, due to market forces. CARB, PNGV and other government mandates tried to lead companies here proactively, but it took market reaction to get real movement. Unfortunately American companies were slower to react than others.

Reasons to Love 3-Digit Oil

Stockpikr has a point. Fuel cells in particular are not a magic bullet. But electric cars are more efficient than ICE, they haven't been used because of entrenched beliefs and perception about battery needs. We need to make rational changes when faced with a coming crisis (it isn't here yet, folks!). Electric cars are part of the solution, but not the only part. Unfortunately, Brahm might be more correct than we want to think.
PaulK, even if abiotic oil is true (definitely not a mainstream idea), it would be so hard to find and so far to drill to these ultra-deep sources that oil prices wouldn't be any lower than they are today. Read the above story about Brazil's ultra-deep wells.

Reasons to Love 3-Digit Oil

Sharksm, the energy companies (XOM, CVN, etc) are in the energy business. Their oil supplies are drying up or being taken over by nationalized corporations. They need to come up with new energy sources to stay in business, BP is not promoting itself as 'Beyond Petroleum' for nothing. Get informed.
Electric cars do not need to cost $45K, with mass production they will be equivalent to cars on the market, with a lot less maintenance and repair needed. They can be powered by unused electric capacity at night, with a very minimal increase in CO2 - saving CO2 by reducing (by attrition) the number of inefficient gas guzzlers on the road. An existing ICE vehicle is <30% efficient (converting fuel to motion), electric vehicles are about 90% efficient.
Last point - our own oil supplies will be fully tapped, I'm sure, but why not wait until we need the oil to keep our farms running, no reason to use our own oil now just to keep John Doe driving to the grocery store in his Chevy Tahoe. We don't have enough to keep ourselves powered for long at all, or we would already have done this in the oil embargo of '79.