MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM: SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION
SUBJECT: Plug-In Hybrids
To reduce oil dependence, nothing would do more good more quickly than making cars that could connect to the electric grid.
The United States has a vast infrastructure for generating electric power. However, that infrastructure is essentially useless in cutting oil dependence, because modern cars can't connect to it. If we built cars that ran on electricity and plugged into the grid, the potential for displacing oil would be enormous.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are a game-changing technology. They can break our oil addiction, cut driving costs and reduce pollution. To help end U.S. oil dependence, there is no higher priority than putting millions of plug-in hybrids on the road soon.
A QUICK HISTORY OF ELECTRIC CARS
The first cars ran on electricity. In 1900, electric cars outsold all other kinds. However, early electric cars could travel no more than a few miles on a single charge. Cars with internal combustion engines, fueled by petroleum, could go much farther. During the early decades of the 20th century, petroleum-fueled cars took over the market.
For almost 90 years, electric vehicles were limited to niche applications. Golf carts and fork lifts used electric motors, but on-the-road vehicles almost never did. Then, in the early 1990s, the U.S. Congress and State of California passed clean air rules designed to spur innovation by major automakers. Several responded with new models of electric cars.
Unfortunately the electric cars of the 1990s produced more controversy than clean air. General Motors EV-1 was the most controversial. Leased mainly in California, with a range of 80-140 miles, the EV-1 won hundreds of wildly enthusiastic owners. But GM considered overall buyer interest inadequate and discontinued production. Major auto manufacturers lobbied successfully to change the California rules requiring them to build "zero emission" cars.
In the late 1990s,Toyota and Honda began marketing the first "hybrid electrics." A hybrid electric vehicle combines an internal combustion engine and electric motor. The engine runs on oil and the electric motor draws power from a battery. The battery is recharged with extra power from the engine (for example, when the car is going downhill) and energy captured from the brakes (in a process known as "regenerative braking"). When the battery is depleted, the vehicle runs on its gas tank. This solves the problem of short driving range that plagued other electric vehicles, while providing better fuel efficiency, torque and other measures of engine performance than a car with an internal combustion engine only.
Beginning in 2003, buyer interest in hybrid electric vehicles began to explode. By 2004, buyers were forced to wait months as dealers struggled to keep up with growing demand.4Worldwide, more than 1,000,000 hybrid electric vehicles have now been sold.
2. THE NEXT STEP-PLUG-IN HYBRIDS
The next big step in automotive technology is the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). Like conventional hybrids, PHEVs combine an electric motor and internal combustion engine. But, as the name suggests, there is an important additional feature. Plug-in hybrids can be recharged from the electric grid. They can-quite literally-be plugged into a wall socket.
The idea is simple, but the consequences are far-reaching:
- With plug-in hybrids, many drivers would need no petroleum for their daily commute. Cars could be recharged at night and many drivers could travel back and forth to work or around town using the car's electric motor only.
- Driving costs would drop dramatically. At national average electricity prices, PHEVs would cost the equivalent of roughly 75 cents per gallon to drive when operating on their electric motors. (When charging, a plug-in hybrid car draws roughly the same amount of electricity as a home space heater.)
- As with many electric cars, torque and acceleration would be excellent.
Said one enthusiast who converted his Toyota Prius to a plug-in: "Everyone wants to drive electric cars, they just don't know it yet."
The biggest barrier to mass production is battery technology. Adding a plug-in feature to a conventional hybrid engine requires adjustments that increase the cost and size of the batteries, while shortening their expected life. Extra costs now run roughly from $8,000 to $11,000 per car. These costs are expected to drop sharply, however, with mass production and advances in battery technology. Many innovators-supported by substantial venture capital-are at work on new high-performance batteries.
In late 2006, General Motors announced plans to produce a plug-in hybrid, known as the Chevy Volt, and displayed a prototype at the Detroit Auto Show. Toyota and other manufacturers have also indicated they are looking seriously at PHEVs. The time frame for bringing these cars to market is unclear.
Plug-in hybrids are coming. Private investments and the predictable pace of innovation will help bring them to market, slowly, during the next decade. Federal policies could dramatically accelerate this pace. The balance of this memo summarizes the benefits of PHEVs and suggests polices to put millions on the road soon.
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For more information about David Sandalow andhis book Freedom from Oil, please visit www.freedomfromoilbook.com.
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Comments: 33
The problem with the plug in is not the technology. We have the electric motor technology. We have the battery technology although the ideal system at the moment (NiMH) is still under patent and can only be used by Toyota for non plug in hybrids. These batteries will go out of patent in 2010 but in a few years we may have better batteries or even better super capacitors which can take a full charge in the same time that it now takes to fill the tank of an SUV.
I would end with one important reality check which I first was reminded of in an episode of car talk. It is far better for the average person to improve the MPG of their gas guzzlers (even moderately) than for those of us who drive a hybrid getting 40+ MPG to improve their mileage even significantly. Let's say a person commutes 50 miles a day round trip. If we look at the different MPG and the amount of gas needed (20 MPG = 2.5 gallons, 30 MPG = 1.7 gallons, 40 MPG = 1.25 gallons) in order for the 40 MPG person to get the same savings as a person going from a 20 MPG to a 30 MPG car (a savings of 0.8 gallons per day) they would need a car that does over 100 MPG (111 to be precise) which is more than double. (Now if you can get the person from 20 MPG to 111 MPG then Halleluiah we're saved!)
That point is well covered in David Sandalow's book, Erin. Even if the electricity came from coal-fired power plants, there would still be less greenhouse gas emissions compared to a gasoline car. Of course, it's better to get the electricity from clean and safe sources such as wind or solar. And it's even better to drive all-electric cars, where needed complemented with fuel cells.
Of course, it is true that nitwits are fairly common in the USA, but even so, many of them can be taught. Give it time, and nobody will look at plug ins as crazy.
I'm not sure I understand defending the right of people to drive Hummers if these vehicles contribute to decreased national security (by using more foreign oil than necessary) and also hurt the environment. Just taking a hard-line, hawkish view for a moment, isn't deliberately decreasing national security, especially during wartime, quite possibly a crime?
OK, the temporary hawkish viewpoint has been suspended. But, we stop people from doing all kinds of things in the interest of national security, or security in general (taking weapons on airplanes, using cell phones in flight, ...). Sometimes we even stop things that hurt the environment, though not as much lately because, for example, the EPA and the Fish & Wildlife Service have been significantly declawed by the present administration.
As for fuel cells, there have been a lot of advances since the 1960s. South Africa has long made its own oil in a manner similar to war-time Germany. This was out of necessity because it couldn't import for so many years. For more, see http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06229/714268-28.stm
The first link is to a lecture Physicist Robert Zubrin gave about his new book "Energy Victory".
Here is a longer link ... the one I really wanted to put out there was on CSPAN but the idiots seem to have taken it down
In this lecture he talks about how conservation of energy is not the solution, because the simple laws of supply and demand allow OPEC and the Saudis to decrease production and drive the price right back up ... in short we are being extorted by belligerent enemies, we are at war. These people are funding and training the terrorists that are determined to destroy us, and we are paying them hundreds and thousands of giga-bucks to do it.
The way to break this monopoly or at least to start to affect it is to broaden the fuels that can be used in cars. Zubrin asks for a mandate that all cars sold in the US be flexfuel capable - meaning they are built to be able to use alchohols, in that way the investment is very small ... $100-200 per vehicle build, and the infrastucture does not change or demand investment.
Then we have lots of different buisnesses that can start to produce energy.
This method was used by Brazil, and now Brazil is a huge sucess story, a energy exported nation.
This is a short to middle term solution, but it make sense while we decide what to do in the long term ... or gird our loins with lead when we realize that nuclear is going to be about the only way to solve this for good well into the future.
I also wrote a short article on this here
Pluggable hybrids would be great ... but I still have not yet been about to figure out how they compute the mileage ... equating miles per gallon with miles per kwH stored in batteries. I have had some indication that the claims of 100mpg is total BS. They consider the gas you burn while driving on batteries as the gas mileage ... which is a lie. I cannot say for sure ... but I would much like to know the exact equation used.
... it is late so I may be full of it or have forgotten to think
of something ... but it tells me how my gas car might
compare to an electric car in cost.
--
To get some perspective on my car's energy usage:
I use about 16 gallons of gas to go 300 miles,
therefore my mileage is 18.75 miles per gallon.
Since gas is $3.50 per gallon.
My cost per mile is therefore $0.19 or about 20 cents per mile. - OUCH!
Since 1 gallon of gas contains 60kWH total chemical energy,
and gas cars being about 30% efficient use 1/3 of the energy
in gas the rest is waste heat, that means I use about 20kWH of
energy from my 1 gallon of gas in the energy of motion in my car.
So for me, burning a gallon of gas takes me 18.75 miles
and used the equivalent of 20kWH of electrical energy
which costs me $3.50 in gas.
The cost per kWH of electricity is about $0.075, or 7.5 cents per kWH.
So the useful energy I use to move my car, the 20kWH if it were electricity
would cost me 20 * .075 or $1.50.
My cost per mile of electrical energy would work out to be
$1.50 per 18.75 miles ... or $0.08/mile or 8 cents a mile.
My gas cost per mile is $0.20.
Other factors are the cost of mainenance, and the cost
to the environment. The cost in global warning, and
air pollution and sickness. I do not know what these
costs are but I do not ignore them, they are something.
There is also the regenerative breaking factor, getting back
some of the energy of motion when you break and storing
it in the batteries.
One other thing that occurs to me is that if we had a system
of computer controlled cars, that would not have to stop at
stop signs, or idle at red lights and could be programmed to
drive efficiently the savings would be huge as well. Imagine
a computer system that could slow your car down, but never
stop it or gun it and pass between other cars in traffic and never
collide and drive efficiently? We would be able to save hundreds
of billions.
That said, we cannot turn on a dime ... or even a silver dollar. The carbon problem is going to be a long term problem where we hope that we have not done anything fatal ... nor has the planet decided to kill us either by itself.
The problems we can work at in our lifetimes and generation is still one of prosperity, freedom, education, health, hygiene, and probably most important - population control.
Not saying to go hog wild on making more carbon, but for the forseeable future we are still increasing our carbon emissions when even if we stopped completely this second it would still be going up and may do no good.
Making cars more efficient is good for the environment, and the second criterion in my opinion is the political one in which the US and the West is struggling for dominance in a world that is full of corruption, war, and egomaniacal tyrants.
I'll wait a moment of silence so the America haters can insert their favorite cracks here, but this is true to some extent, and if we do not think that America is perfect, or the West, then now is the time to start to work on that as well.
Pluggable hybrids that can use flex-fuel, and it would be a major huge winner if we had self-driving vehicles as well that never have to come to a complete stop or idle, but hybrids to help that as well.
Hospitals usually have generators, but a team of plug-ins could theoretically energize some functions of a hospital if gas or oil were unavailable in an emergency.
Thanks for the article.
If the weight comes down for a given power output, then size can likewise decrease and range can increase.
A plug-in wouldn't work for me. Power delivery in my area is too unreliable and I live too far out in the boonies for a plug-in to have enough range for me. Anywhere I want to go is at LEAST a 75 mile round trip. Usually closer to 100+ miles.
Meantime, I'll continue to be a "nitwit" that can actually get where I'm going. Sounds stupid I know.
Efficiency, gas cars burn like 60% of he energy in gasoline as unusable heat.
Power, electric cars with sufficient power and programming are nothing to dismiss.
Regenerative breaking, a gas car loses all the energy of motion invested in speeding up when it brakes ... many electric cars put it back into the battery.
The only reason there is a contest is the downright high energy density in liquid fuel and convenience, and the difficulty in transmitting electricity, and storing it.
Supercapacitors or high-density batteries would change that pretty fast.
I have a Lexus hybrid 400h and absolutely love it. While it only gets 30mpg, it still gets at least twice the gas mileage of comparably-sized SUV's while possessing more performance.
However, the car is aging and when I buy something new I would like it to be a plug-in. Hopefully they can get them to market in the next few years!