Promise of PHEVs

[bystander]

Here's a an article that reports on a recent symposium on Plug-in-Hybrid-Electric-Vehicles (PHEVs).

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct07/5630

Kind if interesting if you have a hybrid or are interested in electric cars.

Includes an amusing quote attributed to Henry Ford concerning customer expectations:

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."

With all the Ford - Model T - Segway comparisons over the years, I'm surprised that one hadn't come up. Maybe it did and I missed it.

[guyler]

You missed it.

[Cube128]

Wow, the promise of an all-electric machine with enough charge to take most people through their daily routine without burning fossil fuels, sounds familiar. I wonder why what is lauded and generates excitment in an automobile elicits only contempt and ridicule when used in an application like the Segway?

[bystander]

Wow, the promise of an all-electric machine with enough charge to take most people through their daily routine without burning fossil fuels, sounds familiar. I wonder why what is lauded and generates excitement in an automobile elicits only contempt and ridicule when used in an application like the Segway?Well, there's a little more to it than that...

The symposium wasn't just about the transportation aspect. You may have noticed that having a 5-10 kw battery in everyone's vehicle allows a new way of managing brownouts across a regional power grid.

By dual use of the EV battery, not only are fossil fuels burned more efficiently at power stations instead of in cars, there can be more efficient use of solar & wind power, plus fewer powerplants can power more things because of the "buffer" in all the EVs exchanging power on the grid.

And power utilities would take on part of the burden of the cost of the battery in the EV, so regular consumers can avoid the high price of high capacity batteries. And there would be a "second tier" for vehicular storage batteries to go to before hitting the recycler.

Don't know how practical it all is right now, or how long it will take to be practical, but I found it interesting.