[citation][nom]pandarus79[/nom]In America, we should really focus on natural gas to power our future... we have the resources here to do so for the next 100 years. With batteries, we are going to be dependent upon other nations for the resources much like we are with oil currently. Push natural gas, work on developing our own resources of rare earth minerals and then, maybe, we push this whole electric position.[/citation]
Not... really...
Many of the materials in batteries can be reclaimed/recycled, and there's many different ways of making batteries with various materials. Natural gas is non renewable and will run out eventually - and very quickly if we decided to use it to replace gasoline.
Let's take a quick chemistry lesson. Natural gas and gasoline are both a collection of various chemicals made from carbon and hydrogen. By breaking the bonds between carbon and hydrogen, energy is released, which we use. So the more hydrogen, the better. Here are the normal chemicals gasoline is made of:
C5H12 (Pentane)
C6H14 (Hexane)
C7H16 (Heptane)
C8H17 (Octane)
Everything there has a lot of hydrogen. Ever wondered why octane is always listed at a gas station? It holds the most energy (in the form of hydrogen), so having more of it in your gas means your gas has more energy.
Now lets look at the chemicals making up natural gas:
CH4 (Methane)
C2H6 (Ethane)
C3H8 (Propane)
C4H10 (Butane)
Understand now? That's a lot less hydrogen. Less hydrogen means less energy. Which means you need more of the stuff to get the same amount of energy. Which means we'll use up natural gas twice as fast as we use up gas. Gas is just another fossil fuel, which means we'll run out in the future again, and faster than we ran out of gas. It's just not feasible. It's a stop-gap measure at best.
Not quite related, but I think as long as I'm bringing up chemistry, I'll show why ethanol is so inefficient. Ethanol is C2H6O. It has a hydroxyl (OH) group in it. Breaking this off the carbon doesn't give off us any energy. The thing that makes us want to use ethanol so badly is the fact we can grow it in a field. Inefficiency doesn't matter as much if it gets the job done and you have an unlimited supply.