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
Getting From Here to There
Plug-in hybrid vehicles are clearly more than just devices for getting around. I view them as a realistic means by which society can significantly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. When these cars hit the road in large numbers, which I fervently hope will not be more than a year or two away, some fraction of the energy used to recharge them will come from renewable sources feeding the grid. And some buyers will install solar panels or wind turbines specifically to recharge their plug-ins. As more and more people do so, society will gradually become less and less dependent on fossil-fuel energy.
Plug-in hybrids could thus diminish the amount of petroleum being used without requiring any new energy-delivery systems. That is, plug-ins don't face the Catch-22 of many other schemes, such as powering cars with hydrogen, which demands that a network of specialized filling stations be put in place before people can be expected to purchase cars that run on that oft-touted fuel—a development that is unlikely without enough hydrogen-powered cars around to justify the emergence of such an infrastructure.
With appropriate financial incentives, plug-in hybrids could one day serve to feed energy back into the grid on occasion, thus helping electric-power producers satisfy peaks in demand, which typically take place in the late afternoon. If, say, a kilowatt of power were transferred from a given car for an hour or two, its battery pack, which might hold 15 kilowatt-hours of energy, would not be drawn down significantly. The reduction in all-electric range would amount to less than 10 miles—indeed the effect could be minimized or entirely reversed if, after the peak in demand had passed, the same amount of energy were then returned from the grid back to the car before it was driven.
As plug-in hybrids are manufactured in increasing numbers, they will be paving the way to a society that bases its energy needs on renewable sources. The various impediments to designing such vehicles have been overcome one by one over the past three decades. The only element clearly needing further progress is energy storage in electrochemical batteries, and there is ample evidence that these devices can soon be made in a way that satisfies the needs of the automotive market. So I am confident that plug-in hybrids will allow all of us to retain and indeed improve our comfortable lifestyles at a lower cost and in a less disruptive manner than any transportation alternative envisioned today.
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