Plug-In Incentive, Part II
My recent blog about tax incentives for plug-in hybrids elicited a number of supportive comments from readers, but there was an undercurrent that I think needs to be addressed: if we become a nation of plug-in hybrid drivers, where is all that electricity going to come from, and won’t it be just as expensive and environmentally harmful as the fossil fuels it replaces? I was surprised to see some commenters even bring up the specter of nuclear power to charge our millions of plug-in hybrids! Will it really come to that?
A recent article by David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, appearing in EV World, puts the electric vehicle/electrical infrastruture issue in perspective. Morris claims that, while generating 100% of our country’s electrical gereration from renewable fuels would be difficult, and perhaps not even desirable in the short-term, converting 100% of our transportation system to renewable electrical power (i.e, solar and wind) is feasible:
“To electrify our transportation system, on the other hand, we could displace rather than shut down the existing system, and we would be replacing a physical stock with a relatively short life expectancy. Given the average seven-year life expectancy of existing vehicles and the high probability that we would offer an incentive for owners of older gasoline-powered vehicles to trade them in, new electric vehicles could constitute the entire fleet within a decade, and that doesn’t take into account the potential for conversions of existing vehicles.”
“Powering 100 percent of our transportation system would require about 30 percent of the electricity generated in 2006. With a massive effort, using a combination of solar and wind power, we could generate about that much electricity by 2020.”
What he’s saying is, we don’t need nuclear power to drive electric vehicles, so we can put that idea out to pasture right now. There are other ways to power plug-in electric vehicles. I am reminded of an exhibit I saw last year at an electric vehicle show, in which a beautiful new Tesla electric roadster was parked inside a small carport whose ceiling consisted of solar panels… the car was charged by its own garage. Will that work for everyone? Possibly not, but the point is that we are starting to exploit new ways to generate electrical power, and now that plug-in vehicles are on the way those electrical generation technologies are racing to be ready.