First, hybrids are growing fast, and are likely to be 5% of the market in 5 years. 2nd, surely in 5 years most hybrids will be plugged in – this suggests that plug-ins will be 5% just a year or two after that. 3rd, light vehicles less than 6 years old account for 50% of miles travelled. 4th, gas prices are likely to continue to rise quickly, and awareness of climate change has reached critical mass, so demand will be there.

I expect plug-in’s to account for 75% of new light vehicle sales in 15 years, and 50% of miles travelled.

I was a little surprised to hear that Dr. Hillebrand’s lab only makes up 10% of Argonne. I can not think of a more pressing issue in our time than energy independence. Hopefully, the next administration will change this.

Concerning not charging during the day- I think this statement is a little ridiculous. If PHEVs will tax the grid that much, then we need to build more power plants. There is no shortage of uranium, wind, or coal in this country. The more energy we consume that is produced domestically, the better off we will be. I mean how many days worth of funding the Iraq war would it cost to build a new reactor? seven? eight? This is a no-brainer. While most PHEV owners will only charge during the night time, making a statement like that (that charging during the day will somehow damage the grid and should be avoided) hurts the PHEV cause and will scare away some would-be PHEV owners. Statements like this hurt our cause and I was a little shocked to hear a person responsible for helping to advance PHEV technology say this.

Concerning the MPG standard, I really think we have to move to a two-number system. The first number would include the number of miles the vehicle can drive on electrical power under average circumstances (please take into consideration air conditioning). The second number would give the MPG the vehicle gets after the battery is discharged and the ICE kicks in, again under average circumstances. This system would easily allow the average commuter to calculate how much gas they will actually use each day, when comparing vehicles. (EX: a 50-mile commute would consume all of the Volt’s electricity and then rely on the ICE for the extra 10 miles).

Concering PHEV adoption, I have to agree with Van #8 on this topic- oil could easily skyrocket in the future and at $5.00/gallon gas, people would be retiring their Excursions to the junkyard. This brings up a pretty scary economic issue: overnight people’s expensive SUVs would drop in value exponentially due to lack of demand for large SUVs powered by old ICE technology. A 2005 Navigator might be worth $500 after such a skyrocket- who knows. Either way, PHEV adoption could occur a LOT faster, depending on future world events.

Dave, here’s my list: http://www.thecaseforpluginhybrids.com

I really think that there are more benefits to driving PHEVs and RxEVs (better overall efficiency and torque, for example) than those already listed: Economic, political, and environmental reasons listed in #4 and #5, as well as the perverse, and somewhat disturbing, ethno-centric reasons listed in #8. I really want to hear more about the prospects of a better electrical grid that plug-ins can enable. But I’m afraid that Donald Hillebrand and others at the DOE are not yet up to speed about the concept and are unintentionally delaying development and deployment of the technologies. Honestly, I’m afraid that Google may be making more advancements on that end than the Feds.

To make my point more concisely: I don’t think that we should just be looking at the promises of plug-in technology from the 20th century perspective of oil economics, a long tail-pipe, and a dumb grid. But we should be looking instead at a 21st century new economics of driving where we are supposed to keep our cars plugged in all day, because we have a smart grid and grid-tied cars that enable us to optimize the entire system to have the best economics and ecology possible.

Please, Lyle, bring this up in your future interviews. I really appreciate everything you’re doing here, and I follow this site regularly, but I’m concerned that this is an important aspect of the technology that is going largely unmentioned by the specialists.

Right, and wasn’t part of the rationale of the connecting all of the plug in hybrids to the grid that all of the bateries could feed power back when sources like solar and wind were not contributing because of weather? Thus you get to take better advantage of them when they are available?

As I commented this morning on your post about the battery research bill, I see your solar idea as another legitimate national “defense” expenditure. For the price of the Iraq war, we could install enough solar generating capacity that we probably wouldn’t need any oil from the Mideast. Maybe the Pentagon could pay for it.

Perhaps this is true, however I would still be able to purchase way less gas than usual. If it turns out not to work well for me, I will give the car to my wife and buy another Elantra.