What The New Hybrid Electric Cars and Glade(R) Have in Common.

Plug it in, Plug it in! Last week Toyota announced it's plans for delivering a plug-in version of heir hybrid dynamo, the Prius, to United States showrooms by 2010. While this is great news for the carbon emission faithful, it's hardly surprising. For the last few years Toyota has been offering hybrid vehicles (through both their standard and Lexus brands) with the price, performance, a number of offerings that few other car companies could touch. And they haven't been keeping quiet about it. In addition to their Prius, which, if you visit progressive cities like Boulder or San Francisco (and to some extent, NYC), has become something of a Model T in terms of ubiquity, their RS series SUVs and their LS series luxury sedans have been taking advantage of their Hybrid Synergy Drive, allowing a mpg/performance ratio that's a much better solution in terms of carbon emissions than, say, BMW's terribly inefficient Hydrogen 7 initiative. In fact, with the new class of plug-in hybrids, drivers should be able to make it home and back during short trips without using a drop of gas at all. Some of the proposed batteries move cars for a range of 40 miles before the gas engine kicks in, which is more than the average commute in America.

One of Lexus's Hybrid Synergy Drive(R) commercials which aired on the other side of the pond.


As we begin to see a push away from vehicles fueled solidly on fossil fuels, the implications become more pervasive than the lower mpg numbers. Plug-In hybrids are vehicles that have more to offer us. Not only will they drop emissions but they have the potential to supplement the electric grid during peak hours, when demand is high. See, while every day power plants around the country create energy that's gobbled up, every night they create nearly as much electricity that simply goes to waste. The electric grid doesnt really store energy so they make careful judgments on how much to produce given the demand they foresee given extrapolation from historical consumer demand data. In essence, the power grid is like your local supermarket. They produce a highly perishable product based in quantities based on demand. The difference is that when demand becomes outstripped by supply, the prices don't simply go up, blackouts happen.

With new technologies like Vehicle-to-Grid ("V2G"), Plug-in hybrids, when augmented with the proper infrastructure, can give surplus energy BACK to the grid they took it from the night before. What most Americans don't know is that the average car packs a LOT of power; more than ten kilowatts by some estimates, which is enough to power, you guessed it, ten homes. Sounds crazy but when you think of the fact that when we drive we move more than 2000 lbs at an average rate of about 40mph, the machines need all that juice to get the job done. Obviously some manufacturers have moved toward the 'less is more' line of reasoning which states that the lighter you make your car, the more speed you can get for less turns at the fill-up station (as is the case with the chassis of the Lotus Elise) . I'm sure as time progresses, the manufacturers of the GMC Volt and Toyota Prius will take that into account as well. Regardless of whether you're giving back to the grid on a normal basis or you're pulling out your V2G hardware for power-backup during blackouts.

So what do we get from plug-in hybrids that makes them beyond the geek? (1) Decreased fuel consumption, which leads to (2)less greenhouse gas emissions and (3)more independence from foreign oil, (4)fewer $$$ spent on gasoline since the user can charge up at home, and of course, (5)the ability to give power back to the grid, which, I may have forgot to mention, leaves the power company paying YOU.