The alien was fanging about above a lonely country road, as they like to do, when its saucer suffered a fatal system error. It had just completed a spectacular series of cosmobatic jinks when the main drive failed, causing it to drop like a sub-prime loan, straight into the nearest farm dam.

Realising that its Universal Positioning System was useless under water, it bubbled to the surface, consulted its mindbook on local dominant lifeforms and rearranged its atoms into a human shape.

As luck would have it, a scientist from the CSIRO happened to be driving by and saw the alien standing by the side of the road.

“Need a lift sister?” asked the scientist.

The alien ran the words through its inter-galactic thesaurus, adjusted the idiom filter for local time, smiled at the driver and replied, “Yes, I would just so like that.”

“You’re lucky I came along.” The scientist turned to the new passenger. “You’re also one of the first people to hitch a ride in our latest ‘UltraBattery’ powered vehicle.

The alien decided that it might not be quite the right time to explain its non-human status.

“What’s your name,” asked the scientist.

“Al”, the alien decided.

“Pleased to know you Al, my name’s Sally. Like I was saying, this car has a hybrid energy storage device that integrates a supercapacitor with a lead acid battery in one unit cell. It’s the best and latest technology. Pretty cool, ay?”

Al couldn’t think of anything sensible to say.

Sally carried on regardless. “Like it says on the CSIRO website: ‘integrating a conventional car engine with a battery powered electric motor means HEV technology achieves the dual environmental benefit of reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption from transport’.

“And it goes on to say: ‘this unique design harnesses the best of both supercapacitor and lead acid battery technologies to produce a battery that can provide high power discharge and charge with a long, low-cost life’.”

She turned to face the alien. “We also reckon the UltraBattery offers a number of advantages over conventional car batteries:
•cycle life is four times longer
•50 per cent more power than lead acid batteries counterparts
•approximately 70 per cent less expensive than current HEV battery systems
•faster charge and discharge rates.”
(Of course she used ‘air bullets’ for the emphasis.)

Meanwhile, Al was busily calculating mass, closing velocity and the likelihood of imminent disintegration.

“Watch the bloody road,” it yelled, giving Sally just enough time to swerve to the left, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision.

“I dunno,” said the alien. “If you people can achieve the co-operation required to hurtle along at these speeds, with only a couple of metres separating flimsy missiles going in opposite directions, you should be able to achieve anything to which you set your minds.”

“Drop me just up here, thanks. I’ve had quite enough for one terrestrial rotation.”