I’ve been driving the same car for quite some time, now. It’s not that I can’t buy a new car. It’s more that no automaker wants to sell me the car I would like to buy. In the years since I bought my current car, the price of gasoline has soared, yet most of the current offerings from the major auto makers are no more fuel efficient than the car I already own.
The way I see it – with my commute to and from work, I shouldn’t even need to use any gas. My commute is about 15 miles each way.
If I’m going to take the plunge and buy a new car, I want something more than just a slightly less gas guzzling car than I have now. In short, I’d like a plug-in hybrid. It’d be a good deal more efficient, and it might even be less polluting – since it’s a lot easier to control emissions from one large source (a power plant) than it is from lots of tiny, separate sources (like individual gasoline engines).
It’s too bad that no one will sell me one.
C&E News has an article that surprised me a little.
The Department of Energy lab study assumes that by 2025, one-quarter of U.S. cars will run on a combination of electric and liquid fuels and will require plug-in charging. If all cars are charged at 5 PM, when electricity demand is high, some 160 large power plants will be needed nationwide to supply the extra electricity, according to the study. However, it says, if the charging is done after 10 PM, when demand is minimal, as few as eight—or possibly no—new power generation facilities will be needed, depending on the availability of regional electricity.
I’d assumed that putting lots of plug-in cars on the road would mean that lots of new power plants would be needed rather quickly. Apparently, that’s not the case as long as these cars designers make them default to charging during off-peak times.
So, automakers … where’s my plug-in hybrid?