Since nearly the dawn of the automotive age, many “alternative” fuels have been tried, but virtually all have come up lacking when compared with petroleum-based diesel and gasoline. Apart from availability, portability and stability, one of petroleum’s key advantages is what engineers refer to as power density, which, in short, is a measure of how much work a given volume of a fuel will produce.
Other fuels and power sources have positive attributes but have a tough time producing as much work as the same volume or weight of petroleum fuels, and those that are volumetrically competitive generally suffer from production scaling issues.