I'm not sure if the heating is natural or not since temperature studies from specimens from soil and ice shows a lot of tempereature,
however
it is clear that it's not good for breathing with the stuff that's sent out, both vehicles but also powerplants and other factories, however while factories and powerplants indeed have a big share of the total polution then cars are the most prevalent source of air-polution in cities, especially diesels but a particle-filter can handle that, plus modern diesels have massive amounts of torque that should make even americans happy and they can run on bio-diesel that is CO neutral since it's from rapseed oil. However if enough of that can be produced to cover fuel is another matter so it's both the vehicles and the use of them that should change for the future.
About electric cars, this doesn't look too shabby in my humble opinion.
http://www.supercars.net/cars/3528.html200+ miles (322+ km) average range, 0-60 mph (0-96.6 kph) in around 4 seconds.
Here's a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt1AdfgcNiQThere is however another problem with electric cars, production polution and polution from what produces the electricity for it, but again there are different ways to handle this problem.
My dream-house will have energy windows, designed with materials that suite the enviroment and with advanced electric panels on the roof and a small private wind-mill in the yard (I don't plan on living in the city but outside of it in a peaceful hillside where I can get peace to gather my thoughts so I can handle myself since I've gotten my theory proven that if I just get some peace to gather my thoughts and rest then some traffic and people when shopping in a city isn't going to stress me more than I can handle calmly).
In DK they made a demonstrator-house of wood with paper-insulation among other technologies, and this house was so tight it couldn't be measured to leak in a large test-chamber (it was fairly small, only slightly larger than a shed so it could be trucked around to show what was possible already today). Furthermore, and here's the kicker, the solar-panels could power 90% of all the power the house needed, and due to the insulation and different construction-method elimitaing cold-bridges over the windows then this house, in Denmark did not need any conventional heating system!! This technology already exist!
I also think cars today are way too heavy due to tons of electrical equipment totally unneeded for my purpose like: heated seats, heated windshield washer-nozzles, electric seat-adjustment, lit make-up mirrors in both sun-visors, automatic windshield wipers (rain-sensor), high-power stereo with tons of speakers, tons of sound-proofing making it hard to hear what's going on with the car, as well as emergency vehicles, hydralic engine mounts and balance-shafts to elimate the engine's vibration, again counter-productive for a driver, multi-zone aircondition (ok this is just for me not driving a family and if I get to USA then I would need AC, but in DK, no), lights in glovebox, engine-room, trunk, cooling glovebox, heated steering-wheel, engine-sound synthesizer (Ford Focus ST, despite having a good natural engine-sound from the Volvo-sourced Turbo-5-cylinder), electronic handbrake (Focus C-Max MPV, also european), electrically adjustable headlight level, multiple map-lights with dimmer and delayer, electronic shock absorbers, computer-controller electric power-steering with computer-orverride steering (BMW-system, part of ESP), electronic brakes (fly-by-wire brakes, no physical connection, Mercedes-Benz), 7-speed computer-controlled automatic transmissions (BMW and Mercedes-Benz) etc. etc.
The electric plane was probably a fuel-cell plane, it uses a fuel-cell with hydrogen where there's a process that produces electricity and water, I can't remember the details but many companies have developed running prototypes of such a thing, in DK there's even a Focus sedan running with a system like that in private ownership. Mazda used the Wankel rotary engine with good success to run on hydrogen since the seperated combustion-stages makes it easier to run on it.
Btw about E85 or pure ethanol, it has a higher octane rating and therefore it's optimal compression-ratio is higher than when running on normal gasoline, I think I read that pure ethanol has a octane-rating of around 120, not sure if that's the european RON or the US std. Danish scientists recently took out a patent on a technique to extract ethanol cheaply and easily, I think it was from garbage.
Frank