It could be an aerial photo of an oil spill: liquid spheres pooling, oozing, dwarfing a bedraggled landscape. I half expect to zoom in on poisoned seal pups or waterbirds dragging their oil-soaked feathers. But the scene is microscopic. The “landscape” is made of E. coli. And what’s happening is exactly the opposite of what it seems. The little bugs aren’t drowning in fuel. They’re making it.

Did you know that many American cars already on the road can run on E85 (a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline)? Fueling up with ethanol can help to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Click here to calculate your savings.

With the latest version of parent Toyota's gasoline-electric Hybrid Synergy Drive system under the hood, the posh RX 400h is the first SUV hybrid that actually outperforms its gasoline counterpart. A 3.3-liter gasoline V6 teams up with powerful front and rear electric motors to create a four-wheel-drive RX that is not only quicker (7.3 seconds to 60 mph, against 7.8) but also vastly more fuel-efficient (31 mpg city/27 mpg highway, versus 18/24 mpg). $49,060

India is booming. The expanding population has overwhelmed the Bangalore-Mysore road the way a river floods its banks, and the flow of two-way traffic is choked with a living history of human transportation. There are belching herds of diesel trucks, diesel buses and iron-framed diesel tractors. There are wooden-wheeled carts pulled by brightly painted Brahma bulls, and two-stroke-motor rickshaws fueled by kerosene or cooking oil or whatever else is flammable and cheap. There are mopeds and bipeds and bicycles and motorcycles, and every conceivable type of petrol-powered, internally combusting automobile, from doddering Ambassador cabs to gleaming 16-valve Mercedes miracles. But there's only one car like the one Somender Singh and I are riding in right now.