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What we need you to do is keep complaining. Can you manage that? Every chance you get, mention the price of gasoline and how unbelievably terrible it is. Mild swearing might help. If you’re good at grimacing, throw that in, too.

This could be a great service to generations unborn, because we’re right at that point where America might finally be just starting to think about perhaps getting ready to somewhat modify its transportation habits. If the price just goes a little higher, and we all close our eyes and complain real hard, things could start to happen. Click your heels together, too, if nobody’s watching.

What’s really unbelievable is that we’re still burning gasoline at such a prodigious rate, as if it were an annoyance to be gotten rid of. Also hard to believe: Our leaders’ best ideas include begging the Saudis to knock a few cents off the price of crude oil – those barbecues at the president’s Texas ranch should pay off any day now – and suggesting that we take the tax off gasoline for three months.

This is leadership? It ain’t exactly calling for blood, toil, tears and sweat.

But let’s move beyond things that are unbelievable and on to things that are tantalizing.

For example: The three-wheeled gas-and-electric hybrid Aptera Motors Typ-1 averages 300 miles per gallon and isn’t terribly expensive. Or this: A Luxembourg company, Motor Development International, is testing cars that can go 70 miles per hour and have a range of 125 miles, while running on compressed air.

Lone inventors and small, underfunded companies have come up with this kind of stuff. Imagine where we would be if the federal government had invested a few billion dollars.

Inventing an atomic bomb took just a few years. Sending astronauts to the moon took just a few years. When our government gets interested in a topic, things do happen.

Of course, when it comes to lessening the profits of oil companies, there’s also the theory that our government makes sure things don’t happen. If you haven’t watched the “Who Killed the Electric Car?” documentary, give it a rent and immerse yourself in an excellent conspiracy theory.

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” centers on the battery-powered EV1, built by General Motors Corp. and test-driven by various California citizens. They loved the cars. They wanted to keep leasing them. But GM picked up the cars, took them to a salvage yard and crushed them.

That seems like an odd decision, if the company really wanted to open a whole new market. GM may have had some valid questions about how large and lucrative that market really was, but if there’s one thing Detroit desperately needs, it’s a breakthrough.

These days, GM is getting lots of attention with its hybrid Volt concept car. Unfortunately, the Volt remains a theoretical car. A theoretical car does save you a fortune on maintenance, but on the other hand, you don’t go anywhere.

In the meantime, amazing innovations like the Aptera are zipping around in the real world. According to Fortune magazine, Steve Fambro started working on the prototype a few years ago with a focus on aerodynamic styling. He came up with a hybrid vehicle that can go 40 to 60 miles on battery power alone, which is the equivalent of roughly a zillion miles per gallon. A gas-powered engine kicks in more and more often on longer trips. “Just beyond 120 miles, we’re around 300 miles per gallon,” the Web site says. “After 350-400 miles, it eventually plummets to around 130 mpg.”

It may be risky to take the promoters’ figures as gospel, but they have convinced the first batch of buyers. Fortune reported: “The initial production run of 1,300 vehicles will be available only in Southern California so that the company can service them. Priced at around $30,000, Aptera’s cars are already sold out.”

So maybe there is a market, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt for the government to subsidize some research. As for the compressed-air idea, we’ve probably given it enough time to be proved wrong; one source says a man named Dennis Papin advanced the concept in 1687.

Or, if you think such alternatives are too outlandish to fool with, and you think we should stick with oil, we can just hope for lower prices from the leaders of the Middle East. They seem like reasonable guys.