FEATURE ARTICLE
Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles for a Sustainable Future
Appropriately designed hybrid cars will help wean society off petroleum. The necessary technology is available now
Andrew Frank
Why It Pays to Conserve
Although a plug-in hybrid will initially have a higher sticker price than what's found on a conventional car, the differential is bound to diminish with time. In any event, the cost of the automobile is only a part of the equation. Even if plug-in hybrids cost somewhat more, they can still end up providing a better value to the customer.
For example, plug-in hybrids can be charged from the grid late at night, at what in many places are lower nighttime rates, making the cost of transportation energy only a small fraction of what one pays now for gasoline or diesel fuel. Electric-power companies are sure to expand the availability of discounted nighttime rates in the future, to ease the burden on their systems during peak daytime hours. Right now, the demand for electricity during the day exceeds that at night by almost 50 percent. Hence about a third of electric-power plants have to be cut back or shut down at night, which leads to idled generating capacity (not unlike what happens with the engine of a conventional car). But even when they are doing nothing, these generating stations are expensive to maintain—and these costs must ultimately be passed on to consumers. Having a substantial number of people charging their plug-in hybrids at night would tend to even out demand, helping producers bring down the fees they charge everyone for electricity.
Might the widespread adoption of plug-ins overtax the power grid? Probably not. If these cars were recharged only at night, the electric grid as it currently stands could support more than half the transportation fleet being plugged in without the need for constructing any new plants or otherwise affecting the use of electricity. And because it would take at least a couple of decades for plug-in hybrids to become that common, the nation would have plenty of time to build new electric-generating facilities, be they powered by fossil fuels, with nuclear reactors or from renewable sources, such as wind or solar energy.
Indeed, one of the great advantages of plug-ins (and purely electric cars) is that they can directly use solar- and wind-generated electricity for transportation, a process that is three to four times more efficient than converting such renewable energy to hydrogen for vehicular use. Further, with solar panels or a small wind turbine generating a modest 1 to 2 kilowatts and with the appropriate power-handling electronics, the owner of a plug-in hybrid can have a reliablesource of emergency power for his or her home, even when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. In this way, a person can achieve a substantial degree of energy independence.
These features add value to owning a plug-in vehicle, making for an attractive product. The solar panels used to obviate the purchase of gasoline can be paid for with the money that is saved in about five to six years, whereas the panels themselves should last 30 years. This combination thus provides some 25 years of essentially free energy for transportation. Purchasing a plug-in hybrid and a renewable source of electrical energy to charge it thus buffers consumers from volatile energy prices. In addition, these cars could easily be made to burn biofuels (such as ethanol) when they need to run their engines. The widespread adoption of such vehicles would cut down on the net amount of carbon spewed into the air while providing considerable energy independence for the nation as a whole.
Still, car makers are understandably hesitant to bet on plug-in hybrids—or on any energy-conserving strategy for that matter—because a drop in fuel prices would cause demand for energy-thrifty cars to dry up. A national energy policy that ensured that fuel prices would undergo a steady, predictable increase would allow the automobile manufacturers to gauge the market with more certainty. But it seems unlikely that the United States would ever follow such a course. The politically likely alternative is to allow the price of energy to fluctuate drastically and to let the auto industry try to make the best guesses it can about what people will want to buy. Although this energy policy (or rather nonpolicy) can lead to poor business decisions, it should make plug-in hybrids attractive to some forward-looking consumers, who will seek energy independence wherever they can find it.
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