The carburetor you're referring to was the Rochester Products built, 4-barreled, "Economizer" and could increase gas mileage by as much as 20% on some engines. It used machined parts instead of cast parts, and fully tunable and adjustable jets. It also cost 50% more to make, about $400 for the model I used on my dad's Chevy 1974 Impala with the 454. But it did improve his fuel mileage to an average of 16mpg local, and 21mpg on the highway. Considering the reputation of the 454 as a gas hog, this was a huge improvement!
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Of course, fuel injection, and smaller, more efficient engines made the Economizer useless. Today, a GMC car with a 210hp 3.8liter motor can get 20-25mpg on regular gasoline.
The downside of Ethanol is that while lowering emissions, it also lowers fuel economy. To get better mileage, you need to use a higher compression ratio, which requires either premium grade gas or more additives, like lead to prevent pre-detonation knock.
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The real answer of course is to stop BURNING fuel.
Period.
No more gasoline, ethanol, natural gas or vegetable oil.
Forget about getting fuel from coal, the process uses more energy then it creates.
In fact; NO more carbon based fuel of ANY kind.
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This will not happen overnight, it will take decades to de-construct a trillion dollar industry. Decades in which the people who get rich off of us burning carbon based fuel will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the guillotine.
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The electric car is the future.

The problem with the electric car is, of course, where do you get the electricity?

Most of the electricity in the U.S. comes from coal burning plants or natural gas burning plants. Hydropower and nuclear power have their own environmental problems and I doubt that wind power, solar power, geothermal power, tidal power, etc. will ever provide enough electricity to run all of the auotmobiles in the U.S.

Although there are some gains from regenerative braking, electric cars really just turn coal into a portable fuel. The same problem exists at one remove with compressed air vehicles (coal to make electrify to make compressed air).

As for natural gas, its probably more efficient to use the gas directly as a motor fuel rather than converting it to electricity first.

The answer is to quit using cars--use public transportation, a bicycle, walking, van pooling instead.

Maybe a Rhoades Car with a solar panel?

People just don't get it. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall when I hear "we can make hydrogen from water!". Don't they teach the first law of thermodynamics anymore?

Society must, and shall, learn to get by on less energy. Exurbs are dinosaurs and will vanish (along with the hyperchurches that depend on them, thank God). Society will, one way or another, return to a structure whereby most people rarely venture more than a few miles from where they live.

The question is - given all the technology we have these days, and given the future price of transport, how can we best live?

Without a massive cheap electric source like fusion the idea of getting hydrogen from water is laughable. Hydrogen was tapped by Bush for a reason though: The easiest place to get hydrogen is....
*dah dah dahhhh*
OIL!

So in the end we would be still burning oil but able to feel good because we are calling it hydrogen. We could turn a blind eye to the fact it comes from a oil refinery and be all smug and what not. Yay no more burning oil, we have clean burning hydrogen made from oil, yay.

The bit that annoys me over the whole mess is how stupid people have been. Even in the 1970's the first questions about oil reserves came to light and in the thirty years all we did was become more dependent on oil. We saw that we couldn't sustain our way of life so and decided the best cause of action was to burn as much as we could, a fast as we could!

It is disgusting but no which way I turn the last 30 years I don't see this mentality. This everyone else we need to grab all we can for ourselves. We sprawled out without a concern to how much energy we would waste driving a hour or two every day for work. We over consumed and where taught by those in charge that this made us great. When it came to waste there seemed an agreement that the more you had to waste the better you where.

I played too much civ but this came to mind:
Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.
-CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
The ethics of greed.

I was disgusted the first time I heard that but sadly many people have this idea the centerpiece of their whole philosophy. They created a society based around it and others fell over themselves to live the same 'me-first and only' lives. So very few seemed to realized just what this meant: That our children will suffer so we can live fat, greedy and wasteful lives.

Maybe we will have to burn fuel in power plants to produce the electricity needed to run an electric automobile society. The thing most people over look is that electric power plants have FAR higher efficiency ratings then your automobile. It uses less fuel burning fuel in a power plant to power electric cars then burning the fuel in the cars directly.

The real only problem with electric cars is battery life and we are making huge strides in this field. Even so the current batteries would be more then enough if it wasn't for the westernized 'sprawling' development. I still feel this development was back scratching to the oil companies in the first place though, make a society where people must commute over a hour to work every day...

I agree with you about public transportation still.

There was a group of adds that highlighted this, those adds where for... railways! They just laid out the facts that one train could carry hundreds time the goods as a single truck and do so using a fraction of the fuel that same truck would need.

As for an electric rail system... well America is a big place with lots of dry areas just screaming for solar energy plants and other green energy. Australia even more so!

Concentrated solar is one of the 'top of the list' for me. These plants use the same basics as other electric plants, steam powered turbines, but get their heat by redirecting the suns rays into a single point. The heat generated is enough to turn mineral salts into liquid! The liquid salts are then used to create high pressurized steam and generate the same amount of energy as any other steam turbine plant.

Yet Australia has only one of these plants, tiny at that, for 'research purposes.' AKA: not exporting much to the grid because it is underfunded at best and being ignored as a possible solution as a favor to big-oil at worse.

The states.... I don't know if they have any!

There is one solar thermal plant of the type you're describing - in the Mojave Desert in California, and it's been there for years. At last a second is supposedly about to be built.
=Michael Fox

Not surprising our government taking a page from Bushes book concerning alternative energy. Just build one plant, that is enough you can deny your ignoring the technology while making sure it isn't a threat to the pre-established fossil fuel based systems.

If anyone complains say your 'researching the technology' to shut them up.

I concur with Bullet. The technology is there. Toyota
has the Prius FOLLOWED BY some American car companies. Some students from M.I.T. developed a total
electric car, and I'm sure that with a little tweaking
it will the future.
The only problem with this is, How do you get mom out
of her gas guzzling SUV?

In 1990s my mom's Geo Metro 3 speed automatic got roughly 40 mpg. The manual version got nearly 50 mpg. Today car companies brag when they get over 30 mpg. What gives? Why are car companies going backwards?

There was a recent thread on SC about stupidity. The auto makers started making SUV's because they were classified as a "truck". Trucks did not have to meet the strict fuel economy and emission standards required on other vehicles. The auto makers then sold the public on the idea that these monsters were safer than mom's Geo Metro.

Of course a big SUV would be safer than a Metro in a collision. Drivers were faced with an ever increasing number of large semi trucks traveling faster an faster. So the appeal of the big SUV's made a lot of sense. Gas prices were low. So American's bought SUV's like crazy, which only increased the risk for people, like me, who continued to buy Honda Civics or Toyota Corollas because they were more fuel efficient.

America is a monkey see, monkey do society. The Jone's down the street bought a new SUV. So Joe Six Pack has to buy a bigger and better SUV. The Jone's move their four person family to a 2,000 square foot MacMansion. So Joe Six Pack moves his family to one with 3,000 square feet. After all, they need room for their family entertainment center and the mud room. (By the way, can someone explain what a mud room is to me.) We had plenty of mud outside where I grew up.

Putting aside the whole hypocritical nature of it all (these people are the 'free economy' worshipers) I am still frustrated at the way the western governments subsidizes things.

The idea of subsidizes are to make a vital industry attractive to investments during the 'infant' stage, to help secure the industry till it is self-sufficient. I bold vital because these markets where meant to be required for further progress as a country, say for example energy production or a national wide spread transport system.

Instead we see vital industries being ignored while companies are getting subsidized even if they produce nothing that benefits the society at all. Many of the times these companies are already raking in money, proving they don't need subsidies at all, and just pocket the tax payers money as extra 'no cost' profit.

The largest 'welfare queens' happens to be corporate bodies....