John McCain has proposed a $300 million prize at taxpayer expense to stimulate development of a more efficient, long-lasting battery to power electric vehicles.

Dumb.

Automakers and battery researchers, including those in the U.S., already have plenty of incentive to develop a next-generation battery. With gasoline costs soaring and Americans actually driving significantly less for the first time in 30 years, the handwriting on the wall could hardly be clearer: The days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.

General Motors has announced its sales fell a whopping 26 percent in June, while its truck sales fell an astounding 37 percent. Other automakers around the world reported similarly disappointing sales for June, with only Toyota showing an increase in U.S. sales of its more fuel-efficient gasoline-powered cars.

So survival alone already dictates that automakers move past gasoline to another fuel source. But is electricity the right source?

Quick answer: No.

Even the most efficient battery is only a storage device for the electrical current that powers hybrid and electric cars. The electricity itself has to come from somewhere, and that excess load would outstrip current U.S. generating capacity. So if John McCain has his way, those hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of shiny new electric vehicles will have to get their power from scores of new fission reactors burning plutonium or uranium.

A better, more sustainable solution is already being implemented in the tiny country of Iceland, where hydrogen fuel cells power the small fleet of Daimler-Chrysler buses that crisscross Reykjavik. Still experimental, the goal of Iceland's SMART-H2 project is to completely eliminate oil imports within two decades.

GM and other companies are already racing to develop hydrogen fuel cells, hyrdrogen generating systems and the infrastructure to deliver it at the filling station.

There are drawbacks. The investment required to convert the U.S. transportation system to hydrogen would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And electrolysis, the technology that refines hydrogen by separating water into two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, also requires great amounts of electricity.

But hydrogen has too many advantages to ignore. First of all, it comes from water, the most abundant and readily available resource on the planet. There are no foreign sources required when the Atlantic and Pacific can supply all our needs. Second, a hydrogen vehicle's only emission is water vapor. Conceivably, the water could even be captured and recycled back to hydrogen and oxygen.

So if there are any prizes to be given out, they should be for developing hydrogen. Otherwise, we're just buying an expensive — and short -term — hybrid solution.

And that's even dumberer.