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There is a ton of research going on in this field. The term for overall consumption of energy by an automobile is "well-to-wheel." Check out what Google has to say. Overall, hybrids are saving some energy, though the amount saved over standard vehicles varies depending on the design of the hybrid. They will definitely end up saving money for the driver; especially the ones that don't need a plug and use techniques like regenerative breaking to recharge their batteries. In addition to automobile manufacturers, there are also government sponsored vehicle design competitions like Challenge X and FutureTruck that challenge university students to improve the overall well-to-wheel energy efficiency of vehicles currently in production.

What about FutureTruck? Or the GM HyWire? How is it a conflict of interest for auto manufacturers to build fuel cell/diesel/hybrid vehicles?
Yes, their project was built for I think this is a step forward but to sit there and claim that there's some kind of conspiracy is laughable. To produce a viable alternative to the combustion engine takes time. It took us over 100 years to get engines that last 100K miles, while at the same time get 30 miles to the gallon, and go 0-60 in around 7 seconds (2004 Honda Accord V6) while at the same time have enough space to seat 5, and put all their stuff in the trunk. And that's what people expect; go around 300 miles before fillups, be able to carry all their stuff and not worry about their engine breaking down on them. That's why we're seeing hybrid technology first so we can build on top of proven technology.

There's a University competition sponsored by Ford and the DOE to build environment-friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles called FutureTruck. The catch? They have to modify Ford Explorers, not create go-cart sized vehicles, maintain existing performance, and remain fairly manufacturable. (In other words, Ford is using college teams for their R&D.)

There've been amazing results: the winning team, from University of Wisconsin Madison, built a hybrid Explorer that got somewhere over 40 mpg. (Different sources disagree as to the exact number.) For reference, stock Explorers are rated at merely 15/19 mpg for city and freeway driving. They also scored well in emissions and made a vehicle which could probably be manufactured and sold for about the same price as a stock vehicle.

So it's not 1700 mpg. It's still pretty darn impressive for an SUV!

The Future Truck competition may or may not meet your requirements, but it tries to do something more practical.

The FutureTruck competition is highly sponsored (read: "Ford"), and produces good research, but also good, experienced electrical and mechanical engineers (I'm neither, which lead to my quitting the team--oh well) who have faced the design challenges of a real vehicle. Anyway, we can sit here and pick apart why the Tzero isn't worthwhile, but the fact is that it's a concept car, pretty much, and it shows that it is possible to get great performance out of batteries.

I was a member of the Penn State FutureTruck program this past year, which had 15 universities develop hybrid-electric Ford Explorers. I know several schools had in-dash PC's of some sort to provide entertainment, telemetry, and navigation functions.

PSU's system (picture here) , which I wrote in Delphi, focused on entertainment, such as the MP3 player screen shown in the picture. The interface is fairly easy to navigate without requiring too much attention while driving. The display itself is a touchscreen made by Xenarc, the company that makes the DIN-PC featured in this article. The PC itself is a Cappuccino Mini-PC running Windows 2000. The PC was mounted in the center console which (after adding some small fans) kept it cool enough to run well.

Unless there have been some massive changes in solar array technology, the average solar car's pulling about as much power as standard hair dryer, as that's about all they have to work with.

The speed differences come from motor technology (axial flux motors, developed by um....can't remember his name...a guy from NTU, in australia), which eleminates transmission losses, and from better weight reduction, and more importantly, aerodynamics.

And well, as we all know, SUVs are lacking a bit in that whole 'aerodynamics' area.

What you want isn't a solar car, but another one of GM's little competitions --

http://www.futuretruck.org/

I've been working on a project at Georgia Tech called FutureTruck, which is sponsored by the Department of Energy and some major automobile manufacturers. If you're interested, the website is here. GT is one of 15 schools from around the US and Canada that were tasked with taking a GM Suburban, a rather poor MPG performer but popular in today's market, and making it cleaner, more efficient, and (if possible) even more consumer-attractive.

Just a couple things I've noticed over the past 2 years of this project:

1. Fuel cell vehicles are still a ways off. The hydrogen containers are bulky and heavy, and a system still costs around $1 million.

2. Diesel/biodiesel looks promising but a few problems remain - more polluting than normal gasoline, different performance issues, and such. However, they are more efficient overall. Paired with an electric motor, diesel engines could turn out to be cleaner and more effective than gasoline-only vehicles.

3. Electric-only vehicles are very limited in range and scope. Batteries are still heavy, even the 'new' kinds of batteries like Lithium-Ion. Combined with the need for a charging/recharging infrastructure, and the (at least) American desire for power, the electric-only vehicle will likely be relegated to shuttle cars on a set path.

4. Hybrids, like diesel-electric or gasoline-electric, seem to be the wave of the near future. I believe all the schools participating in FutureTruck are using a hybrid system of some sort. The Honda Insight is a good example of a production car that is a hybrid vehicle. It can reach about 70 MPG after a bit of driver training/getting-used-to. There are an array of configurations and methodologies for hybrid systems that I won't get into here, due to space considerations. But I believe, and so do a lot of other schools and even car manufacturers, that hybrids will pave the way in the near future. Beyond that... maybe they'll have fusion power worked out by then. ;)

I hope this helps some of you out with what's going on in the alternative fuels/powertrain area. I am by no means an authority on this subject, so visit the Department of Energy, the Argonne National Laboratories, and the Society for Automotive Engineers websites for much more detailed information. Those websites are here, here, and here respectively.