Hybrid Car

The Plug In hybrid car will help save environment

Two environmental research groups estimate in a new study that widespread use of hybrid cars that plug into household outlets for recharging would equate to removing more than 80 million passenger cars from the nation’s roads, reducing air pollution and saving oil.

But while several automakers are experimenting with “plug-in” Hybrids, technical hurdles remain to make them commercially-viable, especially producing an affordable battery. “The opportunities and possiblities are huge,” Mike Tamor, Ford Motor Co.’s top executive in hybrid and fuel cell vehicle research, said in an interview Thursday. “But it’s going to be a very expensive proposition to really make all this happen.”

Plug-in Hybrids differ from conventional Hybrids such as the Toyota Prius in that their batteries are recharged primarily by household current when they are parked rather than by their gasoline engines on the road. Proponents of the technology say that’s preferable because the generators that produce electricity for the power grid run more cleanly and efficiently than the gasoline engines of individual cars.

The new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the California-based nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute looked at the impact of large numbers of plug-in Hybrids — as much as 60 percent of the fleet — between 2010 and 2050 and concluded that they could reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide by 2050 by an amount equivalent to that produced by 82.5 million cars.

The report also contended that plug-ins can reduce petroleum consumption by up to 4 million barrels a day, about a fifth of what the nation consumes now.

The report said the cars would increase demand from the sometimes overloaded power grid by 7 or 8 percent but that most of their demand would be at night when electrical usage is lower. “The demand from these cars is very modest,” said Mark Duvall, program manager of electric transportation at the power research institute.

Earlier this month, Ford and Southern California Edison announced plans to jointly develop affordable plug ins. Ford also has a small experimental fleet of plug-in versions of its Escape hybrid now under evaluation, Tamor said. And earlier this month the carmaker showed an experimental plug in hybrid SUV that substitutes a fuel cell for the gasoline engine. Ford says the HySeries Edge gets fuel economy equivalent to 80 miles per gallon of gasoline and produces no harmful exhaust emissions.

Toyota has said only that it is experimenting with a plug in hybrid but General Motors has committed to building one, a variant of the Saturn Vue conventional hybrid now sold. GM hasn’t given an on-sale date, however. “It’s all dependent on the battery — it’s cost, capability and safety,” spokesman Robert Peterson in Detroit said Thursday.

GM also has shown two versions of an experimental electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, that plug in to recharge and resemble Hybrids in that their onboard engines, gasoline in one version, a fuel cell in the other, can recharge the batteries on the move.