Unfortunately, in both of these comments, you are assuming that I want people to keep buying gasoline cars. As I said clearly above (quoting the second time I said it): “Let me repeat that I think the shift to plug-in hybrids is both beneficial and inevitable – but we also need to reduce the amount we drive.”

Assuming that we both reduce the amount we drive and shift to plug-in cars, the same people could pay as utility rate payers instead of paying as car buyers. It is cheaper to live in a neighborhood where a family only needs one car instead of two, and to buy one plug-in hybrid and pay the utility to buy one battery pack, rather than buying two plug-in hybrids.

“your demands for “that elusive number” are unlikely to be met unless you are specific about energy demand. … On the whole, I don’t think the number even matters because our total energy use will decrease

As a start, I would like to see the total amount of kilowatt hours that would be used to replace 100% of our current VMT with electric cars. I think this would show that we would need to reduce VMT as well as shifting to electric. Needless to say, our total energy use would decrease even more if we also reduced VMT.

Would you reason in the same way about China and India? Do you think it would be fine for the Chinese and Indians to drive as much per capita as Americans as long as they use plug-in cars, because the power would be generated off peak?

Are you against California’s SB 375, which is meant to reduce the amount people drive by reducing sprawl? Are you against proposals to reform federal TEA spending by giving more funding to transit to reduce the amount people drive?

I am sure that you are not against these things, any more than I am against plug-in cars. I think we both take the only reasonable position: that we should both shift to plug-in cars and reduce the amount we drive.

Re: Batteries, the charge is so cheap, that some may do it for free, like certain parlors in Las Vegas, Safeway in California and others that expect to benefit from your stay in their store or barber shop, or movie theatre, their overly cooled and overly lit stores.

Batteries: China will sell cars that go 100 miles between recharges, companies may provide free recharge to their workers and avoid the bookiping expense, call it VoltPerk.
GM’s car is said to have a 40 mile range, how long before the 2 Battery version comes out? Two days?
How about replacing batteries like we replace empty Natural Gas tanks for fulled ones for BBQ and cooking? Well, “I take good care of my battery, why should I ….” What?

Sequestration: Seems like a pipe dream but history teaches that the same was said of the airplane, so I will not call it that for the next 10 years, then I will call it the worst I know at that time in life beginning with “You know what they….”

Also, instead of attempting to limit emissions from millions of tailpipes (nearly impossible) you at least have a chance in the medium to long term of capturing emissions from power plants. So even if all our electricity were produced by coal plants, the situation is far superior to continuing with business as usual. We need to start large scale production of electric vehicles immediately in order to allow economies of scale to reduce costs and start to replace our worldwide fleet of gas guzzlers.

BTW, your demands for “that elusive number” are unlikely to be met unless you are specific about energy demand. Are you interested in the increase at peak demand time, because that is likely to be a negative % for the reasons mentioned earlier. Are you assuming 10%, 50% or 100% replacement of the transportation fleet? On the whole, I don’t think the number even matters because our total energy use will decrease, our portion of renewables can be increased and every analysis of electrification agrees that it will decrease greenhouse gas emissions substantially.

I am also realistic about driving habits. The average person is not going to stop driving but could reduce driving. Have you been following the debate in congress over the reauthorization of TEA legislation? For the first time ever, Democratic leadership is talking about passing a bill whose goal is to reduce VMT in order to deal with global warming.

I think the Democratic leadership is more realistic that you are. They are realistic enough to see that, in order to control global warming, we need to reduce the amount Americans drive.

Where are the millions of batteries going to come from to store all this energy? Currently, energy storage is so expensive that most utilities simply dump the electricity at night because they can’t find anything profitable to do with it. Electric vehicles would solve this problem in two ways, first by storing this energy to release some at peak times while plugged in during the day: V2G (vehicle-to-grid). Also by actually providing millions of high capacity batteries to utilities at the end of their useful lifetime as car batteries they can further facilitate adoption of wind and solar energy (they still typically have 80% of their capacity left.)

I am glad to hear that like me, you cycle instead of driving, but unlike me you don’t seem to be a realist about driving habits. The average Joe is not going to stop driving so the sooner we can offer carbon free options the better.

Joe, I still have not seen a number. If it gets mentioned all the time, please pass it on to me: what percent of our current electrical generating capacity would it take to power electric cars, assuming people keep driving as much as they now do?

There are lots of zero-carbon electric generation technologies, but there are economic limits to how quickly we can deploy them. To avoid the worst effects of global warming, we clearly need to reduce the amount of energy we consume as well as shifting to clean energy.

If we can store energy in car batteries and use it to drive, we can also store that energy in batteries and use it to meet peak electrical demand during the day.

Saying that we should shift to electric cars and not mentioning that we should also reduce the amount we drive is like saying that we should use electric heaters in our homes and not mentioning that we should also insulate so we need less heating.

Let me repeat that I think the shift to plug-in hybrids is both beneficial and inevitable – but we also need to reduce the amount we drive. The numbers would emphasize this point: how much added electricity would we need to keep driving as much as we do today?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8103106.stm

It might not suit individuals but perhaps businesses could consider it for their company car fleets.

No, I would prefer that people drive less. The average Americans drives twice as much now as in the 1960s, and I don’t think we are any better off because we put in all those extra miles on the freeway.

No matter how quickly we build wind and solar power plants, we clearly will not be able to phase out dirty power plants as quickly if we have this major new source of demand for electricity. So, I think we should and inevitably will shift to plug-in hybrids, but I think we should be aware of how much electricity this would demand if we keep our current driving habits, so we realize that we should try to reduce the amount we drive at the same time as we shift to cleaner cars. To draw attention to this point, I would like to see that elusive number that is never mentioned: how much would it increase our demand for electricity if we shifted to electric cars?

I myself have not owned a car for many, many years. I bicycle as my main form of transportation. I presume that you have sent lots of money to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela by buying gasoline over the last decade, Mr. BBHY, but I have sent very little.

Dano, it is good to hear from you. The idea that cars could be charged at night is a common defense of our current loser path, as you say. Of course, the obvious response is that, rather than storing that energy generated at night in our car batteries and using it to power cars during the day, if we drove less, we could store that energy in some other way and use it for less destructive purposes.

A massive project like that isn’t in line with with the direction of the industry either towards distributed power generation.

Too simple? What am I not thinking about here?