Karl Ludvigsen, an automobile journalist and historian whose work I admire, has some interesting thoughts in this month's Winding Road magazine about a contest organised by the St. Louis-based X Prize Foundation, the goal of which is "to inspire a new generation of fuel-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change." (With prize money of around $25 million I may enter a few concepts of my own!) The contest is not without its flaws, as Karl makes clear in his analysis. For enthusiasts who despise anything that threatens the earth-shaking vibrations of a high-powered internal combustion engine the reality they must face is that nothing in life remains the same. Meanwhile those among us who promote better public transit are condemned as "car haters." Sorry, friends, but having grown up with trolleys, streetcars, interurbans and commuter lines I'm in favor of anything that reduces traffic congestion. After all, the more more "they" migrate to transit the more "we" have the roads to ourselves. Oh… and the discoverer of fuel cells was 1839 inventor William Grove, who generated electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of an electrolyte. So what else is new?