[ASSURAS] As gasoline prices rise, Americans are searching for relief, but where is it going to come from -- electric vehicles, or a new breed of the century-old internal combustion engine?

[SALVATORE SCUDERI] We believe, if you take a typical automobile and you pull one engine out and drop our engine in, you're going to be looking at better than a 50% gain in miles per gallon.

[ASSURAS] We'll introduce you to entrepreneurs who are redesigning the old tried-and-true under the hood.

Plus, if an electric is your choice, you don't have to buy something brand-new. What's sitting in your garage can fill the bill.

[DOUG BRETLINGER] I wanted one nine years ago. I didn't want to wait for somebody to finally figure out that we should be doing this.

[ASSURAS] Converting your classic into an EV, all by yourself.

And our panelists mix it up over electric versus gasoline power. Which engine will win? This is "energyNOW!"

Hello, I'm Thalia Assuras. Welcome to "energyNOW!", a weekly look at America's energy challenges and what we're doing about them.

This week, we're looking at one of our biggest challenges, one that's maybe closest to our hearts, too -- the cars we drive. With gas prices more than 30% higher than last year and over $4.00 a gallon, in some places more than $5.00, Americans are buying a lot more smaller, cleaner, fuel-efficient cars, including hybrids. And a study by the financial and accounting firm Deloitte shows that 78% of American consumers say they would consider buying an electric vehicle when fuel prices hit $5.00 a gallon.

As Americans get charged up about EVs, we're still using the old internal combustion engine, though, but we might not be stuck with the same old design. There's a lot of work being done to overhaul traditional engines and make them go a lot further on a gallon of gas, as Dan Goldstein tells us in this "energyNOW!" Spotlight.

[GOLDSTEIN] It might be cattle country here in Red Oak, Texas, but inside this tiny garage, well, if you ask Lonny Doyle, it's an automotive revolution.

[DOYLE] This is what I'm currently designing right now.

[GOLDSTEIN] This is his Doyle rotary engine, and if it ever made it into your car, it could potentially save you thousands of dollars on gas. Considering that a typical American family of four pays about $4,300 a year to fill their tank, that would be a savings of more than $1,000 a year. A lot of families would like that.

This family is working hard to make that happen. Lonny does the design, and his son, Casey, does the machining.

[DOYLE] We have two rows. This is the intake and compression row pistons here, and the other row is the power and exhaust.

[GOLDSTEIN] Doyle's engine has 12 pistons around a central crankshaft, compared to the 4, 6, or even 8 pistons you've probably got in your car right now.

[DOYLE] One big advantage that we have is, on a conventional engine, when the exhaust valve opens, that left-over energy just goes out the exhaust. We don't have to do that -- We get to keep that energy in our combustion chamber.

[GOLDSTEIN] And if Lonny can sell his little engine to the car manufacturers, it could mean big things for his family.

So, if this works out, you're going to have to buy your wife something nice.

[DOYLE] I'll have to buy her something really nice. We'll all have something nice if this works out.

[GOLDSTEIN] Okay, Lonny's not the first tinkerer who thinks he can reinvent the wheel -- or, in this case, the engine. The internal combustion engine has been under the hood as long as cars and trucks rolled off the assembly lines. And despite its inefficiencies -- like using too much oil and having too many moving parts -- it still worked reliably.

[CHRIS ATKINSON, MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR, WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY] To a large extent, it really is the same engine from 100 or 120 years ago.

[GOLDSTEIN] Chris Atkinson has been testing engines for two decades. He says with gas prices skyrocketing, just adding more hybrid electric or all electric cars isn't enough.

[ATKINSON] This has led to a new dawn, if you like, of people coming up with really interesting, innovative new engine concepts that have the potential to get a 10%, 20%, 30% fuel efficiency improvement in time.

[GOLDSTEIN] But to get the engine from here... to here -- you first might want to come here. This is the Society of Automotive Engineers exhibition, held every year in Detroit. Gearheads and motor enthusiasts like the Doyles come to check out the latest high-tech auto toys. And more and more engine alternatives are making it to the showroom floor.

[DAN KAPP, FORD MOTOR COMPANY] I've been in this business for a long time and I've never seen this level of activity and excitement.

[GOLDSTEIN] The Doyle family has plenty of competition. Among them...

[SALVATORE SCUDERI] The Scuderi's split-cycle design separates intake and compression from power and exhaust...

[GOLDSTEIN] This is the Scuderi split-stroke engine, twice as many pistons as a conventional engine.

[SCUDERI] We believe, if you take a typical automobile and you pull one engine out and drop our engine in, you're going to be looking at better than a 50% gain in miles per gallon and possibly up to as high as 100% gain, which is doubling your mileage.

[GOLDSTEIN] The Scuderi engine has venture capital backing -- $70 million worth.

And a short ride outside Detroit is another newfangled internal combustion engine in the making. Eco-Motors and their opposed-piston, opposed-cylinder engine. The engine is flat, and...

[DONALD RUNKLE, CEO, ECO-MOTORS] We can put a similar engine right here with a clutch in between it. Now you have 150 horsepower. But when you step into it and you need more power, the second engine just seamlessly comes on. That's worth about a 30% improvement in efficiency.

[TEXT ON SCREEN] To hear Don Runkle explain how his engine works go to energyNOW.com.

[GOLDSTEIN] Don Runkle's engine is, for now, off to a running start. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla have put up about $25 million worth of funding. Then there's Lonny Doyle. Venture capital funding -- zero.

But there's one great equalizer. None of these engines has actually made it into a car yet.

[KAPP] Something like that is a radical departure. Obviously, it takes you on a very different sort of learning curve to redevelop everything you know.

[GOLDSTEIN] But these engine entrepreneurs say changing the design of the engine is actually less radical than automakers' developing more hybrids or all-electric designs.

[SCUDERI] 99% of the parts that are used in today's engines will go into this engine.

[KAPP] Frankly, while Ford is a full-range manufacturer, what's the compelling reason I want to start all over on a technology learning curve, basically throwing away, literally, billions of dollars in assets to manufacture our engines, right, to jump onto a different horse which we don't know enough about yet.

[GOLDSTEIN] But Ford might be charging its tune. The day after we interviewed Dan Kapp, Ford engineers spent three hours looking over the Doyles' rotary engine. No promises from Ford yet, but a company spokesman says their engineers were impressed. And now, the Doyle family's little engine might be on to something big.

[DOYLE] It would just be a neat thing to go down in history knowing that you've helped the world somehow. That would just be incredible. What could be better than that?

[GOLDSTEIN] In Red Oak, Texas, Dan Goldstein, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] It seems people have been searching for an alternative to oil-based fuels for practically the entire history of the automobile, and especially in times of need. Here's the view from 1940, in this energyTHEN.

[Film projector running]

[MAN] How time flies. With wartime and petrol rationing again, here's a car that doesn't need gas at all. It runs on juice. And how it can run -- round and round and round and round. Okay, driver, we come out here. The design of this all-electric is as modern as tomorrow, and won't women drivers go for it in a big way. Look how easy it is to park. There's only one front wheel, and it can be swung into a close-fitting curb in less than no time.

[ASSURAS] Edward and Don Both, brothers from Australia, invented that car, hence the name. The Both Electric was used mainly for deliveries and essential transports.

Coming up, electrifying your ride.

[GOLDSTEIN] I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So eight lead acid batteries, and you said there's some more in the back of the car as well.

[MIKE BROWN] There's another eight in the back of the car.

[ASSURAS] The do-it-yourself steps for making your own car electric.

But first, the battle between electric cars and the old internal combustion engine. Which will win out in the end? That debate in our MIX, straight ahead.

[BREAK]

[ANNOUNCER] How can we reduce our dependence on oil?

[ZEPPS] Imagine if we could harness all this kinetic energy.

[ANNOUNCER] Who is shaping our energy future?

[SUITERS] China will produce more than half the solar panels in the entire world.

[RICHARD BRANSON] If you've got good quality batteries, you could store the wind when there's no wind, store the solar when there's no solar.

[ANNOUNCER] "energyNOW!" is the only TV news magazine exploring our challenges.

[SULLIVAN] Hybrid technology saved the military $250 million.

[WOMAN] It makes sense to make this shift now.

[ANNOUNCER] "energyNOW!" on ABC-7.

[TEXT ON SCREEN] Mahmuda Akhter will never walk the runway in Paris, Milan or New York. But each year she walks hundreds of miles to help save the lives of seriously ill children. How beautiful is that? Help health workers, like Mahmuda, save children at GoodGoes.org. Save the Children. Support. Learn. Give. Advocate. Join. See where the good goes. GoodGoes.org.

[END BREAK]

[ASSURAS] Welcome back to "energyNOW!"'s very own car show, in which we're wondering whether the internal combustion engine, that's your gasoline-powered car, will eventually be phased out or not as Americans turn to other fuels and electric vehicles. We're curious about your views of what's coming down the tailpipe, so we solicited your input in our Web poll over the last week. The question was, what type of vehicle do you think you'll be driving in 2020? And there were four possible choices. So here's what you told us. Electric leads by a large margin, more than 2 to 1. Next, the hybrid, internal combustion is actually third, and natural gas-fueled is fourth.

Well, to find out more about the road ahead and what you might be driving, joining us for our MIX, Jeremy Anwyl, the CEO of car rating Web site edmunds.com. He's in Santa Monica, California.

And here with me in the studio is Mary Beth Stanek, Director of Environment and Energy at General Motors. Welcome to the MIX, both of you.

I'm going to start with Jeremy, and I'd like to ask you, based on that poll, really, and what you know, is the internal combustion engine being phased out, is it maxed out?

[ANWYL] Well, I was listening to those poll results and kind of scratching my head a little bit because I wonder, what is going to change between today and 2020 when people were hypothesizing what they'd be driving. Because today, electric vehicles are less than 1% of the market. And even if you throw in hybrids, you're talking about less than 5%, so there's a huge gap between what people are actually buying today versus what they think they might be buying in the future.

[ASSURAS] Mary Beth?

[STANEK] I think on an annualized basis, you'll see an increase in percentage, but I agree with Jeremy -- it's going to take a little more runway than 2020.

[ASSURAS] But people are saying electrics are the vehicle that are going to be the ones that I'm going to choose, and yet at the same time, we do see reluctance in terms of range anxiety, in terms of where is the charging station that I'm going to need, and price. And I want to come to that with the electric vehicle. Maybe I'm supporting your argument.

If you look at what the top-selling cars are in the country, internal combustion engines, they're somewhere $16,000, less than $20,000. And when you look at the top-selling electric vehicles, the Chevy Volt, for example, is at $40,000 -- double, in some cases. Is price going to matter? Is that what's going to keep it back?

[STANEK] A couple of things are happening at the same time. We have a lot of technology changes that are coming that are bringing the cost down. In addition, right now, with the Volt, there is a $7,500 credit. So that pulls that price down as well. There also are internal combustion engine offerings that are much more than that price. Again, it's the appointments you want, the performance you want. So, consumers are all different. And you have to assume that not everyone fits into that same space, so, there's products for everybody who would desire one.

[ASSURAS] Back to the first question, the internal combustion engine, what's going to happen there?

[ANWYL] I think a couple of things -- I think one reason why the poll results were so strong toward EVs is because that's what everybody's talking about these days, and I think that's a bit of the problem because a lot of progress has been made around improvements in the internal combustion engine. When CAFE was first introduced back in the '70s, the technology really didn't exist to deliver the kind of cars people wanted with the fuel efficiency that was being mandated. But today technology is pretty advanced and GM's got some engines, Ford's got some engines, like some V6's that deliver performance that used to be considered V8-type performance.

[ASSURAS] You're saying that the internal combustion engine can become quite efficient. Is it going to be efficient enough to deal with gas prices, though?

[ANWYL] Well, we have -- I think, frankly, we have a debate in this country that has yet to really have been aired out. We're just not really honest about this. On the one hand, we want cheap gas prices, but on the other hand, we're also saying that fuel is a precious resource and should be conserved and the two just don't match up. And at the end of the day, we need to make a choice. We either need to make the choice that fuel is plentiful, that emissions don't matter, and cheap gas is a good thing, or that fuel should be considered more precious, and if you buy into that, it should be more expensive.

[ASSURAS] Mary Beth, you know, car companies have to deal with those high gas prices, as well as government saying to you, make them more efficient.

[STANEK] What hasn't been mentioned up to this point is the volatility of the prices. The price at any given day is what we all know it to be.

[ASSURAS] The gas price.

[STANEK] The gas price. So we have to get out of that equation. So having these offerings, whether electrified through battery or hydrogen, or biofuel use, or CNG, this actually takes the energy debate out of the one option we have at the moment, so I think having the options will go a long way to solving that problem.

[ASSURAS] So, in terms of, you brought up other possibilities. What are the possibilities?

[STANEK] Not mentioned in your poll -- it might have been because it was a forced ranking -- but biofuels are going to be with us for a while at various blends, and that will stretch a gallon of gasoline fairly far. They're from renewables -- that cleans it up as well. You're also going to see a lot of variety of electrification. Not everything is going to be pure-EV. You'll see all sorts of hybridization. You might get 20% fuel economy savings, all the way to pure electric driven vehicles, both from batteries and hydrogen, so there's a lot of things coming our way.

[ASSURAS] You're going to be forced that way because of gas prices?

[STANEK] I think it's really because we have had a lot of shift changes with regard to technology. In the last 10 years, just looking at lithium ion, what's happened, it's really a threefold increase in density and performance. So we're seeing breakthroughs in materials; in composition, of how these things are being put together; costs are coming down; so we're able to bring things that were pretty much scientific to the consumer level where the price points are making more sense.

[ASSURAS] Jeremy, what do you say to that? And let's throw natural gas-powered vehicles into this. You talked about the electric vehicle being a fringe. What about the rest of these?

[ANWYL] Yeah, I think that's one of the issues, though, is that the government has made a bet on biofuels and EVs and that's where most of the energy is being applied. There is a blizzard of new technologies that could be applied to powering vehicles. And by placing specific bets, you're actually eliminating or reducing the incentive to invest in those alternatives. The best example is fuel cells, where three or four years ago, you'd go to auto shows and most car companies had demonstrations of fuel-cell technologies. Today, no one's even talking about that. So I think the best approach is a wide-open approach, where we're experimenting and pushing the envelope in a whole variety of technologies and really not placing our bets on just one or two, in case they don't pan out.

[ASSURAS] Including natural gas and diesel, as well?

[ANWYL] Natural gas has been around for decades. Back in the '70s when fuel prices spiked up, there were people converting vehicles to natural gas, and it's a plentiful resource in the United States so we don't have to worry about importing it. Sure, there's all sorts of alternatives we ought to be thinking about.

[ASSURAS] Mary Beth, the last word to you. There's going to be the mix, but what's going to make the difference to the person who's going into the showroom?

[STANEK] The person going into the showroom wants to make sure they can still have the performance and affordability that they have today. What they're going to want, though, is also zero-emission-free vehicles, so I have to disagree with Jeremy a little bit in the discussion with fuel cells. I think most auto companies are ready who are in this space. So, the big question is the big "I." We've got to get the infrastructure reconciled for biofuels, for hydrogen, and also for charging. So I think that's the next thing on the docket that as a nation we need to address.

[ASSURAS] Thanks for an interesting discussion. We'll have to see what we're all going to be driving in the next few years.

Still to come... Want to get rid of your gas engine and go electric? We've been talking about it, but you can do it without having to buy a new car. You'll meet a couple behind a do-it-yourself kit that can help you make the conversion from gas to battery power.

But first, some bloggers weigh in on the potential of electric vehicles.

[NICK NIGRO, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE] Electric vehicles use energy about four times more efficiently than their conventional gasoline counterparts, so I think it's an important goal to go for, and I think we can achieve one million vehicles on our roads by 2015 so long as consumers go out and buy them.

[MARTIN LaMONICA, CNET REPORTER] I think there are more efficiencies that can be wrung from internal combustion engines as we've seen with Ford's EcoBoost. Certainly, you can make the cars smaller and lighter to get efficiency. That said, electric motors will always be more efficient than internal combustion engines.

[BREAK]

[KRISTI YAMAGUCHI] Meet the faces of influenza, groups who should be immunized every year.

[MAN] I have a chronic medical condition.

[WOMAN] Diabetes.

[BOY] Asthma.

[MAN] I have COPD, a serious lung disease.

[WOMAN] Pregnant during influenza season.

[WOMAN] We live with a baby under 6 months old.

[GIRL] I'm 4 1/2 years old.

[BOY] I'm 14.

[WOMAN] I'm over 50 years old.

[WOMAN] Way over 50.

[WOMAN] Care for someone at risk.

[GIRL] I live with someone at risk.

[YAMAGUCHI] The American Lung Association asks, do you see your family or yourself here? As one of the many faces of influenza, you and I and those close to us need to get vaccinated. In an average year, about 36,000 people die from influenza and its complications. See your health care provider about getting vaccinated. It's a safe and effective way to prevent influenza. Visit facesofinfluenza.org. Influenza isn't the common cold. It's serious.

[END BREAK]

[ASSURAS] After all we've just looked at and discussed, let's back up a bit on the talk about electric vehicles. By the end of 2016, according to the J.D. Power and Associates marketing firm, there will be some 159 hybrid and electric models available in the United States. But thousands of old types have been on the streets for years. Pickups, Volkswagens, Fieros -- remember that? -- to name a few. They're old classics which have been energized. "energyNOW!"'s Lee Patrick Sullivan introduces us to some people who are taking charge of their rides.

[SULLIVAN] Up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, through the twisting and winding roads, among the tall California redwoods, live a couple of electric veh--

All right, all right, hold on a second! Before we go any further with this story, there's a few things you need to know about me. First, I still record all of my TV shows on VHS tape. The car I drive was built in 1988 and it still runs perfectly. The headphones I use to listen to music are 16 years old and they have more tape on them than Brett Favre's knee. Heck, if my wife hadn't bought me an iPod, I'd still be rocking my jams on cassette tape. The point of this isn't to tell you I'm a cheapskate, it's just, I don't find a reason to throw something out when it still works perfectly fine. So when I heard that you could get an electric car without buying a new one, I had to check this out. Back to your program...

...live a couple of electric vehicle pioneers -- Mike Brown and Shari Prange, owners of Electro Automotive. Lee Patrick Sullivan.

[BROWN] Nice to meet you, sir.

[SULLIVAN] I've heard a rumor that this Volkswagen right here is an electric car. I didn't think Volkswagen had electric cars.

[BROWN] We had them first.

[SULLIVAN] You had them first?

They had theirs first because they've been making electric car conversion kits for 31 years. Each kit is custom made. Electro Automotive provides the step-by-step instructions on how to rip out the car's engine, fuel lines, radiator, and gas tank. Brown says he designs them so even the novice mechanic can electrify their ride. This is what a conversion looks like under the hood -- lead acid batteries. You know, the same ones you find in golf carts. But if you string them together, you get power.

So these are, I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So eight lead acid batteries, and you said there's more in the back of the car as well.

[BROWN] There's another eight in the back of the car and two more underneath what would be the back seat.

[SULLIVAN] The conversions plug into a normal home outlet. No need for a fancy charging station. The kits cost around $10,000 for cars they already have specs for, like the Volkswagen Rabbit and a couple small pickups. The cars get 40 to 60 miles on a charge. A Porsche 914 that was converted is getting 100 miles per charge, but Brown says that's not typical.

Now, I have a 1988 Fiero GT. Would that be prime for conversion?

[PRANGE] We have a lot of people do Fieros.

[SULLIVAN] So I could turn my Fiero into an electric car.

[BROWN] Yes, sir.

[SULLIVAN] How much would that cost?

[PRANGE] Uh, probably about $10,000, $12,000, with batteries, and depending how crazy you get about the battery boxes and so forth.

[SULLIVAN] And do you guys also provide money for the divorce attorney when my wife notices that the engine's gone from her car?

Now, while I thought about taking the steps to having the first Fiero EV on my block, the Electro Automotive folks took me out back to show me their first VW Rabbit they converted. It's been on the road now for 19 years and it hasn't used a drop of gasoline.

That Volkswagen that's out front, I notice it's already pointing downhill. Can I take that for a ride?

[BROWN] Most certainly.

[SULLIVAN] Let's do it. This will be my very first EV conversion drive, so why don't you go first, show me the ropes, and then I'll take it from there?

[PRANGE] Sounds good.

[SULLIVAN] The car was a lot louder than I expected...

[Motor whirring]

as we went through the twists and turns of the Santa Cruz mountains.

All of those rattles and squeaks that are usually muffled by an engine are now pretty loud. But as for the acceleration and power, it was like a normal car.

So far, Electro Automotive kits have helped convert more than 2,000 vehicles. Doug Bretlinger has one of them. He decided to get fancy with his ride, installing lithium ion batteries rather than the golf cart ones. It also more than doubled the price of his conversion.

What would possess you to want to turn a car from internal combustion to electric on your own? Why didn't you just wait for the Nissan Leaf?

[BRETLINGER] Well, this was done nine years ago. And I wanted one nine years ago. I didn't want to wait for somebody to finally figure out that we should be doing this.

[TEXT ON SCREEN] To learn more about Doug's Rampage retrofit go to energyNOW.com.

[SULLIVAN] And if you think these conversions are on the fringe, they're actually the mainstream, when it comes to electric vehicles. Of the 10,000 or so EVs registered in the U.S., 80% of them are conversions. I took a Chevy truck conversion for a spin at the Detroit Auto Show. It was electrified by a Cincinnati company called Amp. Its business model caters to those who are not mechanically inclined. The company will do the complete conversion for you. Amp only works on vehicles off the showroom floor. Currently it's offering the Chevy Equinox, Saturn Sky, and Pontiac Solstice. The cars get around 120 miles per charge and still have that new car smell. But these conversions are three times as expensive as the Electro Automotive kits. Plus, you have to add the additional cost of a new car. But conversions could be on the fringe really soon, with the flood of electric cars expected to hit the market.

Is there any nervousness about your business model, that there's going to be some affordable electric cars coming out in the next year?

[BROWN] Yeah.

[Laughter]

[SULLIVAN] As for Douglas Bretlinger, he won't be buying a Leaf. He's working on his newest conversion -- a 1982 Fiat 124.

Does this have more to do with that you like to tinker with things and less to do with trying to save the Earth?

[BRETLINGER] More about saving the Earth. Absolutely.

[SULLIVAN] For Mike Brown...

How much of your business plan is that you want to go out and save the Earth and how much of it is that you just love electric cars?

[BROWN] I like to eat.

[SULLIVAN] Okay. Oh, so you do this for money?

[BROWN] Damn right.

[SULLIVAN] Well, they won't be getting any money from me on this trip. It turns out these kits are designed for manual transmissions, not automatics like mine. So my Fiero engine, not to mention my marriage, are safe for now. On the outskirts of Santa Cruz, California, Lee Patrick Sullivan, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] Now I remember what the Fiero looks like. Anyway, one very popular EV conversion kit sold in California turns a Prius -- it's a hybrid -- into a plug-in hybrid. It goes about 20 miles on a charge before morphing back to its regular routine with the battery charging as the vehicle is driven. The conversion was so popular, Toyota decided to release a plug-in Prius of its own, to hit showrooms at the end of this year.

And finally, come on, admit it. I will. You watched William and Kate get hitched, right? And did you notice that really cool convertible they were in when they left Buckingham Palace sporting that "JUST WED" license plate? Well, it was a green car -- fuel-wise, that is -- making it into this week's "energyNOW!" hotZONE.

The happy couple's sporty chariot was a 1969 Aston Martin Volante, powered by biofuel, made by a British company called Green Fuels. Company CEO James Hygate told us that the wedding-day blend -- listen to this -- was a 50/50 distillation of cheese whey from a local dairy and past-its-due-date wine supplied by a Gloucestershire vintner. The car was loaned to William by his dad, Prince Charles, who got it as a 21st birthday present from his mom, Queen Elizabeth. Charles was responsible for the classic's green conversion. He had it converted along with other royal vehicles to bioethanol in 2008 to reduce carbon emissions.

And that's it for this week's "energyNOW!" If you have any questions for upcoming guests, let us know. Upload your video questions or remarks to our YouTube channel -- energyNOWnews. Please give us your name and where you're from as well. And keep the remarks short, if you will, less than 30 seconds. You can also friend us on Facebook, join our discussion pages, or follow us on Twitter. Search them all at energyNOWnews. I'm Thalia Assuras. I'll see you next week.

[END SHOW]