>>>>Here is an interesting policy piece on the price of oil and national security that is interesting:
>>>>
>>>>http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2008/0522_oil_sandalow.aspx
>>>
>>>Tought this was one of you weaker links:
>>>using electric cars to a sizeable percentage will raise electricity cost
>>>(he seems to believe electricity just sits in the wall plug in)
>>>renewable energy will lessen fuel military transport not by a large degree
>>>renewable energy trucks will probably still have easily targetable signatures
>>
>>The point was that our electricity infrastructure can fairly quickly grow to meet any forseeable transportation demands using much cheaper, non-petroleum fuels.
>>
>>Electric vehicles should seriously reduce our oil imports. We'll still need oil for heavy transport (although rail can be greatly expanded and can slowly move to non-oil fuels) and air transport. We'll still need oil for military hardware (although a lot of that that can be slowly converted) and shipping for the forseeable future.
>
>And there's probably a lot of transportation which can be trusted to zeppelins. Nowadays they are far safer than anything else, and can actually be covered with solar cells over a large surface and thus pay for their fuel.
>
>I was shocked to find out that air transportation for small, local flights (like DC- NY, for instance) is being switched from propeller type planes to small jets, even though they consume about three times more fuel. Specially that for flights like that the difference in time is negligible - any speed gain is far outweighed by a few minutes of cruising over the destination airport.

The primary reason for the switch to jet power is safety and reliability. Turbines are generally far less complicated than recips and they last a lot longer between required maintenance. They do suck fuel though.

Problem with modern zeppelins is that they use massive quantities of helium which is in getting down to critically short supply and is only renewable over eons (byproduct of uranium decay IIRC). Other than that, they do offer significant possibilities.