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Power companies today are looking at how they can serve the same number of customers more efficiently. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28699258/)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Wisconsin_Wind_Farm.jpgJohn W. Schoen - MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com) – Jan 19, 2009

A pressing question but I just want to see some on the market. Adoption probably won't be fast enough to really tax our current infrastructure quickly... --Ed.

Despite the breathless hype surrounding the coming wave of electric cars, the shift away from gas-powered transportation is not likely to overwhelm the nation’s power grid — even given the legitimate worries that this critical infrastructure is badly in need of an overhaul. There are a couple of powerful reasons, according to industry researchers.

The first one is that widespread use of electric vehicles is still years — or decades away. President-elect Obama’s energy policy, for example, targets 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015.

Even if car makers switched their entire production runs to electric cars, it would still take many years to turn over the existing fleet of 220 million cars and trucks. The average age of cars on the road today is nine years — and rising. So the power industry has plenty of time to get ready.

Because they generate much of their power from onboard gasoline engines, plug-in hybrids aren’t big consumers of electric power from the grid. You can run a plug-in hybrid with about the same amount of... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28699258/

"Because they generate much of their power from onboard gasoline engines, plug-in hybrids aren’t big consumers of electric power from the grid."

Do any of these guys research a subject before writing an opinion?

I'd say its a fair statement...especially about first gen PHEVs which may only have a few miles of range. As storage tech inmproves, a larger % of power will come from electricity and less from gas. Eventually, we could see the end of the PHEV and the birth of an EV which dominates the market. The worse time for the grid will be when storage is apx equal to the average trip. At that point, the electric grid would be asked to supply almost all the power for travel and people would want to be charged before the next trip. As storage continues to increase, you might store 2 or 3 times the power of an average trip. At that point, if the grid is hard pressed one night, the cars cans wait and be charged on a later night. It gives more leeway.

I'd say its a fair statement...especially about first gen PHEVs which may only have a few miles of range.


The Volt is being advertised (granted I take this with a grain of salt) with a electric range of 40 miles. If the average person drives 26 miles daily, that means there will be no reason for the gasoline engine to turn on at all, ie; the majority of the vehicles power will NOT come from the gasoline engine but from the electric grid instead.

What PHEV's were you referring to that only get a 'few' miles of electric range?

Bnther, assuming the Volt makes it to market, there is very good reason to believe it will in fact offer a usable 40mi of AER. That 40mi was measured over the EPA city testing regimen. Most of us are able to beat the city ratings of our vehicles by timing lights and preserving momentum -- precisely what extends AER. ;)

As stated in the article, current power draws are much lower at night. If we really do switch to using largely electric vehicles and it becomes a power problem, then the power companies will change the way in which we are billed for power, and charge us less at night, which will cause everyone to use timers to charge only at night and even out the power load.

The transition to this technology is so slow that I never foresee there ever being major problems related to power.

What PHEV's were you referring to that only get a 'few' miles of electric range?

Since none are out yet, I'm only referring to the general statement we have heard about PHEVs from different companies. I believe a PHEV Prius was suggested only to have a 10/20 miles range, but again no real world examples.

The longer it takes for a major player to produce a PHEV, the more likely we are to see higher range off the batteries. That could be a downside. If we skip step 1 that I suggested and go straight to step 2, then power producers might receive more of shock on how much more power they will need to be providing. That assumes a lot of things. That the cars are only at step 2, and not at step 3. That a lot of them are purchased in the first year or two. That would require multiple manufactures to produce a cost effective car, people to have enough money to buy cars, and gas prices to be high enough to force people to trade in FSPs. I'll be the first to say, that's a lot of ifs.

Still, in the example of the Volt, I'd still put it in catagory 2. I'm guess most people drive more that 10 miles each way on a daily basis. So, if you don't charge every day, you will not make it home on the 2nd day without using a litle gas. Also, city driving is where hybrids & PHEVs and EVs shine due to energy recovery and other systems. If you can get 40mpg city, I wouldn't expect more than 20/30 highway, and most people do spend some time at or above 45mph which is where I think we transition from city to highway numbers.