Plug it in, Plug it in
I have plug-in hybrids on the brain. Traditional hybrid cars couple electric and gas-powered motors to generate propulsion for a car. They can recapture momentum during braking as electricity to charge a small set of batteries. Plug-ins, unlike current hybrids, have bigger batteries and can be charged off the electrical grid.
Ian Wright (founder of electric car-maker Wrightspeed and maker of the X1 prototype) was recently at Squid Labs doing a talk, discussing the potential for upcoming hybrid tech. Plug-ins with sufficient battery capacity could allow drivers to drive 100 miles or so on a charge, but also have a small gas-powered generator for longer drives. Typical commuters would basically be using an electric car, but with longer range for the occasional road trips.
Using electricity is certainly cheaper (half that of gas, even including the amortized cost of batteries), but aren’t we just shifting the pollution elsewhere? Mostly likely, not. Yesterday, the Terrapass blog wrote up a new report that estimates that plug-ins would significantly reduce carbon emissions, even if the U.S. continues to generate electricity using the dirty technologies (e.g. coal) that it currently uses.
The report mapped out nine different scenarios by varying both the market penetration of plug-ins and the carbon intensity of the U.S. electrical grid. In even the most pessimistic scenario, plug-ins result in significant emissions reductions. In the median (and presumably most likely) scenario, plug-ins shave about half a gigaton of carbon from annual U.S. emissions. To put this in perspective, this is about 10% of the reductions we need to stabilize the climate. Not bad.
The switch would also net reductions in pollutants across the board.
Where are the plug-in hybrids? I want one now.
