Alternative Vehicles: Creative Americans Design Their Own Fuel-Hog Alternatives

We've shown you plenty of gas guzzling alternatives here at WDEF, News 12 this summer.

In case you missed any of them, check out these links: Scooter Power, the Cooking Oil Car,  Hybrid Electric Trucks, Hoyt's Hellcat & the 1980 Electric Car.

But across this great land, inventive minds, both great and small, are coming up with their own alternatives.

Here are some of the examples we've come across over the last couple of weeks.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells:  Honda is rolling out their first cars in the line.   The good news is that their exhaust is water.  The bad news is you can't find a place to fill up.  Hattie Kaufman filed this story on the cars for the CBS Weekend News.

Alternative Experiments:  But a lot of creative minds aren't waiting for the big corporations.  Hattie Kaufman also profiles these  experimental cars.  She's got a solar car, a smaller hydrogen product, and a car you plug into the wall.

American Designs:  And you don't have to be an auto exec to design your own electric car.

Americans are doing it all the time these days.

Here how some of them are doing it.

Here's another experiment: This amateur designer has been building his own cars all his life.  Bob Riley's XR3 gets 150 miles to the gallon by coming up with his own electric/diesel hybrid.

The Pedal Car: And probably the strangest of all.  It's a car from Michigan that you can either drive or pedal.  And you'll also get a lot of stares.