When shown a link to the ford australlian site I took a look, found something interesting. On Ford's falcon model, you can get an engine that runs on LPG, or Liquefied Petroleum Gas. This translates to "10% less carbon dioxide at the exhaust pipe, up to 30% fewer smog forming emissions"

Wait a minute, so Austrialia has an alternative fuel? Appearntly they do, and frankly if Aussie can manage to get a what appear to be natural gas based cars on the road, and give them places to fill up, what is taking the US so long? Ford has the technoledgy, yet I have herd nothing of it being brough to use over here. Ford claims a 38% increase in fuel savings, over gasoline and diesel.

Granted I don't know what environment issues Aussie has, but I doubt they are more than that of the US, so why is Australia able to do something and yet the US is appearntly dumbfounded, shooting in the dark to try and get hyrdrodgen to work. Why not simply borrow the system from another country?

Ford Falcon E-gas website (http://www.ford.com.au/lpg/eGas_home.asp)

Good questions, perhaps I can provide some answers / opinions.
I apprenticed as an auto mechanic down there in the early eighties before moving into engineering, and back then the high costs of gasoline drove many people to converting their vehicles to LPG. A few problems arrive with LPG as a fuel though:
LPG is predominantly hydrogen, and has a very low calorific value compared to gasoline resulting in poor horsepower figures. The common nickname back then was "Low Performance Gas".
Although improvements have been made since with valve seat materials, valve seat wear is a common problem due to the lack of added lubrication and cooling effects of gasoline.
My understanding of current Hydrogen fuel cell technology is that the hydrogen is not being burnt in the IC engine as a fuel.
My general impression based upon admitted limited knowledge is that using hydrogen (or LPG) as an IC fuel is limited due to the reduced distance the vehicle can travel between refueling, and this is at least partly due to the reduced calorific value and consequent amount of fuel required to be burnt.

It's also partly due to using an engine that was designed for gasoline. LPG has a 108 to 130 octane rating (depending on formula), and is capable of being used in engines with 12:1 to 14:1 compression with no pinging. Works great while you're on LPG, only problem with this scenario is you can't switch back to gasoline when you need to.

Couldn't they just have some sort of variable boost on a forced induction system that would run at a lower boost pressure for gasoline, and higher for LPG?