Almost every major auto manufacturer has now announced plans to offer a plug-in hybrid vehicle that can run on electricity for 20-40 miles before switching to gasoline. Since half of American cars travel under 25 miles a day, plug-ins allow people to do most of their driving on electricity, but still have a car for long-distance trips that can be easily and quickly refuelled with gasoline.
Almost every major auto manufacturer has now announced plans to offer a plug-in hybrid vehicle that can run on electricity for 20-40 miles before switching to gasoline. Since half of American cars travel under 25 miles a day, plug-ins allow people to do most of their driving on electricity, but still have a car for long-distance trips that can be easily and quickly refuelled with gasoline.
The most highly anticipated of all the plug-ins is the Chevy Volt, whose new design was recently rolled out by GM. It will be offered to the public by the end of 2010, and, soon after that, GM expects to be selling 60,000 a year.
One key advantage of electricity as an alternative fuel is that it is much,much cheaper per mile than gasoline at current prices. GM says it will cost $0.02 per mile to drive the Volt less than 40 miles per day, versus $0.12 per mile for gasoline at a price of $3.60. If gas prices continue to rise over the next decade, as many think, the fuel savings from plug-ins will only grow.
Another advantage is that electricity can come from pollution-free sources that do not contribute to global warming. There simply is no other alternative fuel that offers a more affordable and practical path to sharply reducing the transportation sector's greenhouse gas emissions.
That said, the lithium-ion batteries required for plug-ins have never been used for this application before. As one battery expert told me: "There are only pilot production of various Li-Ion batteries" around the world. An alternative fuel vehicle expert told me that GM has "already sunk at least $1bn into the Volt and cannot reasonably expect a profit from a $45,000 new car in an economy which is imploding. The actual cost of the vehicle may be higher."
So to succeed, plug-ins like the Volt will require several years of sustained government support. But that should not be a surprise. No country in the world has achieved significant market penetration of an alternative-fuel vehicle without major government incentives and mandates.
Yet while Barack Obama strongly believes in such incentives and mandates, John McCain has a quarter-century record in Congress strongly opposing them. Indeed, he has voted with oil-patch senator James Inhofe and against clean energy and alternative fuels a remarkable 42 out of 44 times since the mid-1990s, not even counting the last eight consecutive votes on renewable energy incentives that he didn't bother to show up for.
Article Continues:Â http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/29/chevy.volt.automotive.environment
