May 16, 2004
FASTER THAN YOU THINK (via Tom Morin):
Dig More Coal, The Hybrids Are Coming: The all-electric car doesn't have much of a range. Hybrids don't save much gas. But just plug in the hybrid, and you have a winner. (Peter Huber and Mark P. Mills, 05.24.04, Forbes)
Coming this Fall: a backup generator from General Motors that you can also use as a pickup truck. The technology under the hood could have quite an impact. Indeed, it could allow the U.S. to displace 200 million barrels of foreign oil per year with 40 million tons of U.S. coal.A coal-powered car? Absurd though that may sound, that's exactly what a hybrid becomes if configured to allow its battery to be recharged from an electrical outlet when the car is parked. Chevy's new Silverado hybrid isn't--it sends electric power the other way, through a 2.4-kilowatt AC power outlet that can run your kitchen appliances out in the middle of nowhere. In your own garage, however, it would make more sense to treat the truck as the appliance and recharge its batteries by plugging it into the wall.
A plug-in hybrid would save most drivers a lot on fuel, because big power plants generate electricity a lot more cheaply than little ones. Running on $2-a-gallon gasoline, the Silverado delivers electric power at a marginal cost of 60 cents per kilowatt-hour. Compare that with electric power from the grid. The average residential price is 8.5 cents per kwh. Off-peak prices, at utilities that offer them, are far lower. You could charge your truck at night. Opportunistic recharging would play a role. Once the plug-in hybrid catches on, recharging terminals will proliferate, acting and even looking a whole lot like parking meters. Mall owners will validate your recharge card when you shop in their stores.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 16, 2004 1:08 PM
This senerio should really please the Greenies.
The whole thing makes sense only if a lot of cost effective nukes are built - another favorite Greenie idea.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at May 16, 2004 4:04 PMYeah, right. Grannies and soccer moms and moms with 2 toddlers in tow are thrilled with the idea of plugging in their car everytime they park. Amazing how all these folks can dream up all sorts of things for the hoi-polloi to do.
Too, evidently none of these folks have ever run out of gas. What do you do when you are stranded on the side of the road and need just a few KWH to get to the station?
The whole point of the hybrids is that you don't need a high-capacity, massive battery.
Now, if somebody wants to tell me that you can replace the gasoline engine in a hybrid with a small coal-fired steam engine... well, actually I won't believe that either, but the idea has a certain charm and I'd at least have to work the numbers before laughing it off.
Posted by: mike earl at May 16, 2004 10:51 PM> The whole point of the hybrids is that you don't need a high-capacity, massive battery.
Kind of limits the benefits of power-line charging, doesn't it?
Posted by: at May 17, 2004 5:34 PMHybrid Cars are wildly overhyped.
If manufacturers were not susidising them as a political tactic to avoid the even greater disaster of being compeled to build the idiotic electric car, they would be too expensive and not sufficently economical to sell.
If we adopted a policy based on excise taxes on imported oil and laid off political dictation of automotive technology, the hybrid would disapear and be replaced by the turpo-diesel in short order.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at May 17, 2004 6:49 PMLet's try this again:
If manufacturers were not subsidising them as a political tactic to avoid the even greater disaster of being compeled to build the idiotic electric car, hybrids would be too expensive and not sufficently economical to sell.
If we adopted a policy based on excise taxes on imported oil and laid off political dictation of automotive technology, the hybrid would disapear and be replaced by the turbo-diesel with the double shaft 6 speed transmission in short order.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at May 17, 2004 6:52 PM