There is alot of research into new things that show alot of promise. Electric cars are of no real consequence, to me they are just window dressing, an electric car is all about the battery and how to efficiently store energy, it is not about efficiently generating power which is really the real problem/issue. An electric car is just an AC motor + battery, the AC motor when first invented by Tesla was probably 90% efficient already, now you can buy a cheap AC motor that can easily get maybe 95%+ efficiency, more expensive motors can get 99%+ efficiency. So ultimately an electric car is just about the battery or energy storage.
In the near future cold fusion has a good chance of transforming the world. For some reason in 2014 there was a whole slew of cold fusion announcements, NASA announced it had a working cold fusion reactor and a large military contractor (I forget the name but it was a huge name) announced that it had a working cold fusion reactor and is working on bringing it into commercial use. Since 2014, cold fusion went back into hiding, it is quite peculiar and perhaps is indicative of a conspiracy theory. What I remember is that a month of two after the military contractor made it's cold fusion announcement, oil started to tumble like a rock and never stopped falling.
In the long run the holy grail is to tap the energy of empty space, the big bang never stopped, all around us is a constant sea of energy and matter that bubbles up from the vacuum of space. It may sound like crazy science fiction, but our universe sprang up from the same principles and if we follow the scientific method we will arrive at a place where we can harness the very power of the universe.
