National Campaign for Plug-In Hybrids to Launch Jan. 24

Austin, Texas, will lead a nationwide partnership that will lobby carmakers to build a new green vehicle — plug-in hybrids. In return, cities in the coalition are prepared to commit to buying the cars — Austin alone 600 of them.  Around a dozen cities and dozens of public utilities are set to announce the partnership Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

A live broadcast of a media briefing by the Plug-In Partners Coalition will be held at 9:30 -10:30 am EST tomorrow January 24, 2005.  According to their press release the following topics will be covered:

• Find out why local governments, national policy organizations, utilities, and environmentalists are uniting behind the push for plug-in hybrid vehicles (electric-flex-fuel vehicles that can be recharged by plugging into electrical sockets);
• Hear how the Plug-in Partners campaign plans to create a compelling case for automakers to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles;
• Learn from some of the country's leading experts on national security, energy efficiency and plug-in hybrids about the merits of developing this next generation of hybrid vehicles.

The webcast can be heard at: www.PlugInPartners.org

The Coalition was started by Austin, Texas, Mayor Will Wynn who be the lead off speaker.  Other speakers include:

• Charles Fox, Deputy Secretary for New York Governor
• George Pataki for Energy and Environment
• James Woolsey, Former CIA Director and Founder, Set America Free
• Frank Gaffney, President, Center for National Security Policy
• Kateri Callahan, President, Alliance to Save Energy
• Alan Richardson, President & CEO, American Public Power Association
• Dr. Joseph Romm, Founder & Executive Director, Center for Energy and Climate Solutions
• Dr. Andy Frank, University of California-Davis, Expert on Plug-in Hybrids

Joining Austin as founding partners are: Arlington,TX; Baltimore, MD; Corpus Christi,TX; Denver, CO; Irvine, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Seattle, WA; and Wenatchee, WA. A few more cities could join the founders by Tuesday.

Comments

[Frank Rugieri]

Plug-in hybrids make sense. Transferring the transportation energy demand from fossil fuel to electricity, preferably from nuclear power plants or renewables, decreases the pressure on refineries.

If your flow batteries actually work as you claim, then wind and solar energy can begin contributing to utility power schemes right away, or as soon as the flow battery load leveling systems go on line.

[C. Scott Miller]

I particularly like to hear that the plug-in hybrids are flex-fuel configured. Every additional gallon of ethanol per tankfull represents about 5% more "miles per fossil fuel gallon". And it will help regions of the country justify the building of their ethanol infrastructure.

[Engineer-Poet]

No it isn't.  A BTU of ethanol takes about 3/4 BTU of fossil fuel to make, so the savings are closer to 1%.  Even cellulosic ethanol can't fix this, because there isn't enough cellulose to do the job at the ~48% conversion efficiency to ethanol followed by 16% vehicle efficiencies.

If biomass can be burned at ~40% in special powerplants (no need to scrub mercury or SOx!) and used to charge the GO-HEV batteries, you can get 30+% throughput or about 4x as good.  You can do even better if you further alter the details of the biomass cycle.

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

I don't dispute the Engineer-Poet's comments, but my position is that we need a source of alternate liquid fuels until hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles become a dominate part of out vehicle fleet. It takes 15 years for a new generation of vehicle technology to become dominate. Battery technology is not yet good enough for practial plug-ins or all electrics, although there are several technologies, including the one in this post that are extremely promising. The growth rate of vehicles world wide will overcome any conservation efforts for quite some time. China now has the second largest fleet after the U.S. and it is growing rapidly.

[Engineer-Poet]

Battery technology not good enough?  Check out Saphion (iron lithium phosphate) or the Altair lithium titanate cells.  The charge and discharge rates have rocketed, thermal runaway is no longer a problem, and eliminating cobalt means the raw-materials costs fall a lot, too.

AC Propulsion repowered a tzero with old-tech Li-ion batteries and got ~300 miles range out of it.  Performance was still stellar.  Put something like the A123 Systems' cells in it, and the batteries would provide enough surge power to out-run a Bugatti Veyron.

Batteries have come a long way in just 2 years.  The problems are more of acceptance than technology.

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

These technologies are either too expensive, too heavy at the present time or are not in production yet. A123 is the closest to being readily available. Their has been a lot of progress in the last two years. There hasn't been time to get the production capacity up and users cannot design vehicles around something they can't get. I expect we will see some of these batteries in modest use within a year or two, but it will take several years to get to the point that they are readily available. I was talking to someone today who said he hadn't found a lightweight, cost effective battery for his application.

[Engineer-Poet]

The hybrid manufacturers are about to switch from NiMH to Li-ion.  The hybrid market is big enough to be attractive, and is poised to grow rapidly (batteries are already a limit for Toyota); I don't see revenues being a problem for a manufacturer who can deliver.