Despite the onset of the latest high energy price era, it goes without saying that the car will remain the main mode of transportation in the United States as the 21st century progresses.

First mass-produced on a national scale by Henry Ford, subsidized by the construction and expansion of the public interstate highway system after World War II, and immortalized by such films as George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973), the car and car culture is intrinsic to modern American life.

The car fuel alternatives

Cheap oil is not intrinsic, however, and that's a major reason why the nation is exploring car / vehicle fuel alternatives. Many options exist, each with strengths / weaknesses, and currently there's no clear winner.

Hence, in a very real sense, your say in the matter will play an important role in determining what fuel most Americans will use for car transportation in the decades ahead.

Typically, a growth stock is defined by rapid revenue and profit growth. Does this make commodity companies growth stocks? Revenue and profits are soaring, but the reality is volume growth for many commodities is unspectacular, with demand increasing in the low-to-mid single digits.

When Henry Ford came up with the Model T, most other automobile manufacturers would produce several hundred cars per year and charge several thousand dollars per car, according to Wall Street historian John Steele Gordon in this weekend's Barron's. In 1908, Ford made 10,607 Model Ts, selling them for $850 each. By utilizing the assembly line, Ford was able to drive down cost, which, in turn, permitted him to charge customers less. Lower prices meant more Americans could afford automobiles, translating into huge volume growth and massive economies of scale for Ford Motor and its part suppliers.

By 1916, Model Ts were being assembled in only 93 minutes and the price dropped to $360, according to Gordon. Ford Motor sold 730,041 Model Ts that year and had 50% global market share. Volume in the auto industry was no longer being defined by a few hundred but by hundreds of thousand if not a million cars produced each year.

What industries demonstrate these characteristics today? It is not the auto sector any longer, that's for sure. Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) and Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD) successfully played the economies-of-scale curve for decades. Semiconductors and technologies are still on this curve. Moore's Law is all about playing this strength.