The meeting is part of Inglis' Walk Talk series of neighborhood door-to-door visits and town meetings.

"High gas prices are a sign we must push to reinvent the car and move to a hydrogen economy," Inglis said. "Rising gas prices are pinching everyone. Chinese demand makes it likely that over the long term, prices will continue to rise. We've got to find alternative fuels. South Carolina can lead the move."

Inglis said the nation can't continue to rely on petroleum as a fuel source because other countries are beginning to use as much fuel as Americans.

He also said hydrogen is a possible answer to remedy that problem. The reason hydrogen is so attractive is that it is safe, abundant and clean, Inglis said.

Simpsonville resident Tony McDade said Inglis "was very careful to stress that conservation could serve us all. If we were all doing more to conserve, we could work ourselves out of all this anyway."

One way South Carolina can lead the charge is through collaboration between Clemson ICAR, the University of South Carolina's Fuel Cell Center,the Savannah River National Laboratory and South Carolina State's research capabilities, Inglis said.

Currently, the top oil producing countries are Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, Iran, China and Mexico, Inglis said.

"Americans can't afford to be in a position where we need the rest of the world more than it needs us," Inglis said.

Dr. Todd Wright of the Savannah River National Laboratory said the lab has years of experience working with hydrogen and ways to keep it under pressure. He said it would be needed to convert it into a fuel source that could help reduce the need for the country to rely on foreign oil.

He also said the lab "has been working for just about 50 years in the handling and storage of tritium, which is an isotope of hydrogen. It's from that work that we have expertise in storage technology, its effects, how to design materials to contain it and how to transfer it."

White said the challenge occurs in trying to get the stored hydrogen up to the efficiency that would be needed to safely and economically power a car.

The fuel source won't be available "tomorrow when you think of the public going down the street" to purchase it, Wright said. "But it's achievable. There have already been demonstration vehicles that have been built. The kind of things we are working on are technical issues that make it more practical and affordable."

Ralph Smith sat in on the presentation and said the market, not the federal government, is what's going to drive the need for hydrogen.

Smith, who retired from a utility company, said alternative energy is just a pie-in-the-sky dream. "If we're willing to pay for a hydrogen car and all the infrastructure to do all that today, it would be there," he said. "But Americans aren't going to pay for it because we still got oil. We've got a market-driven economy, but the government keeps sticking their nose in there trying to push it into another direction.

The next two town meetings will be held at 7 p.m. today in Spartanburg at Pine Street Elementary School and at 7 p.m. Sept. 1 at USC Union's Community Room in Union.