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According to an article by Simon Fogg on the New Electronics UK web site, “In the early 1900s, electric vehicles were more common than their petrol powered counterparts – and so were steam powered versions, although these allegedly took 45minutes to start.” What we now think of as “alternative energy” vehicles were killed off when the self starter became a common feature on internal-combustion cars. The danger of breaking an arm while cranking the family automobile was gone, and women, who had been big proponents of the salon-like electrics of the day, turned to gasoline power to run errands. With two billion fossil fuel-powered cars pumping their exhausts into a beleaguered atmosphere, the question becomes not whether there will be enough gasoline in the future, but whether the future can survive a plentiful supply of such fuel. The CAFE Foundation’s April Electric Aircraft Symposium introduced IBM’s Battery 500 project, as directed by Dr. Winfried W. Wilcke, Manager of Nanoscale Science …