show me an alternative fuel engine that is readily available to the public, and I will show you that it is not within a normal person's grasp... I love my little economic civic... however, I would much rather have another fuel, the problem is, neither the fuel for the alternative engines is available everywhere, let alone a lot of places, and electric cars are a joke that only run maybe 100 miles a day between recharges without HUGE $$$ upgrades.
As for the fuel prices, it went up about 1$ with the first hellicane here... and before that about 80 cents, when I started driving it was 1$ on an expensive day, a month later, 1.50, then 2.00 was normal, its gone up so much in such a short time, and we are getting BS answers for it... personally, I don't want to pay a ton of money for a fuel we don't really have a choice in unless we are rich.... and its not just for petrol for cars, it is natural gas for heating homes as well.... among all the other things... Fuel for cars can go up, but when the price per barrel goes up, which increases EVERYTHING related to it... well that is cause for concern.
Here's one for you...
Hardware stores here sell what's called "Denatured Alcohol" which is 99% Ethanol, 1% Methanol (Something about preventing you from drinking it or something like that). You change the hoses in your civic to a rubber that alcohol doesn't deteriourate well, and guess what? It's 106 octate fuel! It works out to roughly a dollar a litre here... And even cheaper for painters and the likes of (Any trade that uses it as a cleaner basically)
And if you start to go on about "That's not what I'm talking about"... People in the US have E85 and E10 (gasahol I think it's called)... If you convert your car over, you can run that too, no problems at all!
My girlfriend's race car runs on the stuff, and it's registered on the street too, use it as a daily if need be.
Also, the other viable one is natural gas conversions (Here in Australia most gas conversion places are backed up 12 months with work, some more than others), as it's 50 CPL or so (Cents per Litre, I'm sure you can exchange AUD to USD, and Litres to Gallons). Lots of people say that you can't make decent power on it either, which is untrue! There are a few nice cars with around 300Kw (around 400hp) at the wheels, but they run straight gas, not dual fuel.
Plenty of cheaper alternatives out there, just have to think and look
(From memory, avgas - Aviation fuel, is only around 100 octate... All octate levels are based on the Australian methods and markings)