Unveiling Our Transportation Future

On Tuesday, October 24, 2006, I attended a talk entitled "Unveiling Our Transportation Future: Colorado's First Plug-in Hybrid." The welcome speaker Dr. Lakshman Guruswamy, EESI, began his presentation with the startling fact that their have been no improvements in fuel efficiency standards in the US in the last 10 years. An introduction seamlessly laying the red carpet for the proposed Plug-In Prius to take center stage. A number of speakers followed, each filling in a missing piece of the Prius puzzle.
Carl Lawrence, the Founder and CEO of Hybrids Plus, explained the engineering and trial and error work that goes into building a fuel efficient, semi-battery dependent, Plug-In vehicle. Mr. Lawrence made it clear that the Plug-In can go only 34 miles on battery power, and when the battery output stops the car simply switches to a gasoline engine. He noted that the average person drives 29 miles per day, making it seem that 34 miles of battery power would allow a full day's worth of travel without the gasoline engine kicking-in. Even if it was necessary for folks to rely on the engine for longer journeys, Mr. Lawrence estimated that said Plug-In could go 3,000 miles and cost only $212.70 for gasoline and $60.00 for electric. He did not mention however, how long it would take for the car to begin to show a return on its rechargeable battery that alone costs $16,000 US dollars.
Joel Swisher, the proponent of the "Smart Garage" followed Carl Lawrence. It was Joel's idea to pursue the construction of an even lighter, more aerodynamic vehicle powered solely by electricity, that would push fuel efficiency to the extreme. Mr. Swisher did not mention what might happen to such a light and airy vehicle if it found itself under the wheels of a much larger and heavier SUV, and if such a vehicle would be one in which consumers would be willing to load their children.
It was Mr. Swisher's assumption that emissions of CO2 would "probably" go down because energy would shift from gasoline to the power grid, transferring the pouring-out of emissions from in-town to out-of-town. In all fairness it should be noted that Mr. Swisher did mention that CO2 is a collective problem, meaning that no matter where it is emitted, it all winds up in the shared atmosphere of the earth. He also mentioned that "perhaps, on occasion," a Plug-In owner could use saved power from the car's battery rather than buying more electricity. These owners can "potentially" put saved battery power back into the grid.
Mr. Swisher's presentation was backed by a presentation by Keith Parks, the man with the numbers to support the environmental soundness of the Plug-In Prius. Mr. Parks analyzed, among other things, what it might take to get Hybrid Plug-In owners to plug their cars into the grid at off-peak hours, citing the hours between 3:00-4:00 a.m. Though the analyses of Mr. Parks were professional and scientifically based, it seemed unlikely that Plug-In owners would be setting their alarms for the wee hours to shuffle bleary-eyed into cold garages to plug a car into a socket. And who is this particular group of Plug-In Prius owners? People in the position to own garages presumably, which leaves out a good lot of the population, an issue of demographics and socio-economic status that was not broached.
The entire presentation, though well thought out, constructed and displayed, seemed lacking in that it did not provide a goodly amount of opposition, then attempt to tackle it. A quiet insistence on the ideal nature of the Plug-In Hybrid made the actual success of the car less plausible than it might have been had the speakers openly discussed the possibility of its flaws.