Americans Strongly Favor Raising Fuel Economy Standards to 50 MPG, Poll Finds

Those things all help, but this is why I said the problem doesn't lie with generation capacity (unless they succeed in killing the coal plants, which, again are 45% of our power), but with the grid, itself, and in particular the non-urban grid, where there's not a lot of businesses, and the current flow capacity is not there. Plus, at night, when people are charging, is when it gets cold, and their heat is running full bore... Plus, to have enough charge time for enough capacity to (nearly) replace fuel, the charge current is going to have to be high, or the charges are going to have to be long, and get into the early morning and late evening peak times...

To be honest, my expertise is in automotive stuff and material handling... All I know about the grid and capacity is what I've been told by 2 of my Engineering friends who work at 2 different power utilities, who say they're going to have to do a BUNCH of upgrades when more than a few plug-ins come online; and that without coal plants (or new Nuclear plants to replace the capacity), even though there isn't a generation capacity issue now, there will be if the coal plants get killed... Regardless of what the people who are trying to kill them say...

Mike

 

E* vehicles are going to be mostly urban for a long time IMO, so worries such as Barton writes seem theoretical to me. The arguments also presume vehicle charging on top of current consumption patterns, but that is hardly written in stone.

 

While true some places (LA/NYC for example), REMC starts 15 minutes from downtown around Indianapolis, and nearly everybody who commutes to downtown (with money for a new vehicle) lives outside the loop... The vast majority of these people have less than a 35 mile round trip.

Having said that, everything about the future patterns is theoretical, good or bad.

Best case scenerio that makes this all doable is a huge technilogical breakthrough, such as the "electrically charged goo" that you roll up to a gas station and empty your discharged goo, then take on new charged goo... Gas station could charge their goo at night, off peak, etc... That would, literally, take the place of gasoline...

Mike

 

Grid definitely needs to be modernized in most of the country, but it needs this with or without widespread adoption of plug-ins. Except for a few areas, there is plenty of current capacity on the grid for plug-ins, except for some local improvements.

Night is when the grid has the most over capacity. This is even true in Indiana in the winter where I think you live.

The upgrades for plug-ins are pretty minor compared to other things that are happening on the Indiana grid. Multiple coal plants will be closing in the next 3 years and more pollution control equipment will need to be added to some of the worst of the others. There is a new much cleaner IGCC coal plant due to start in 2012. There should be new much cleaner more efficient natural gas generation coming on line to replace some of the worst of Indiana's coal plants. This will raise electric rates.

 

Yes, yes we would. This is why the thrid row Prius V needs to come to the US!