Scientific American Validates PHEVs w/Romm & Frank Article
Mar 16, 2006 (From the CalCars-News archive)

Although Scientific American is a consumer publication, its editorial
processes are more like those of rigorous professional
scientific/academic journals. Anything that goes into this
161-year-old magazine is exhaustively examined and "vetted."

Thus, it's a major signal that hybrid cars have arrived when an
article called "Hybrid Vehicles Gain Traction" appears on pages 72-79
of the April 2006 issue (now on new-stands). That's also true for
plug-in hybrids when the cover promotes the article with the phrase
"Plugged-In Hybrid Cars." This article provides a superb overview of
hybrid technology, Then it positions PHEVs as the logical outcome of
the evolution of advanced technology vehicles, and explains their
benefits. We present a few excerpts below.

The article is written by two leading experts on
energy/transportation policy and practice:
* Josep J. Romm, principal with Capital E
<http://www.cap-e.com/mission>, a consulting firm providing
"integrated intelligence and strategic investment advice on
distributed energy." He's an MIT-trained physicist, former US Energy
Dept. Acting Assistant Secretary, and author of "The Hype about
Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate.
* Andrew A. Frank, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Professor,
University of California at Davis and Director of the Advanced Hybrid
Vehicle Research Center ,http://www.team-fate.net>. He a University
of Southern California-trained engineer, the creator of the first and
the most plug-in hybrid prototypes, and a long-time advisor to CalCars.

We encourage you to get the article (with not-to-be-missed graphics)
-- for yourself and others. Newsstand price is $4.95. Online, you can
register and pay $5 with a credit card to download a PDF of the
article (you can also get the cover and table of contents). At
<http://www.sciamdigital.com>, look for the link to the April 2006
issue. Here are some selections:

TITLE: "Hybrid Vehicles Gain Traction"
As car buyers turn to fuel-sipping gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles,
a new generation of greener hybrids is just coming over the horizon

By then [2010], next generation technology, called plug-in hybrids
will offer motorists still better fuel efficiency as well as other
perks: low-cost battery recharging overnight by simply connecting a
120-volt plug to an electrical outlet at home or work, very few trips
to the gas station each year, and even the chance to sell surplus
power back to the electric grid. Beyond the consumer benefits,
however, the new plug-ins would help reduce the release of greenhouse
gases by displacing emissions from millions of tailpipes to utility
power plants. Today these facilities burn domestically supplied coal
or natural gas, and in the future they should generate cleaner
electricity from energy sources such as wind, solar or even advanced
fossil-fuel systems that capture carbon dioxide for underground storage.

Some makers of full hybrids, such as Toyota and Ford, have replaced
the standard Otto cycle engine used in most gasoline-powered cars
with a more fuel-thrifty configuration based on the Atkinson cycle. A
modern Atkinson cycle engine uses electronic controls and
intake-valve timing to achieve greater expansion of the fuel/air
mixture burning in the cylinder, thereby allowing the power plant to
make more efficient use of the fuel. Engineers had only rarely used
the Atkinson cycle before because its greater fuel economy comes at
the expense of power output; however, in a hybrid, the electric motor
can make up for the lost power. In highway driving, the Atkinson
engine, combined with the energy savings from braking regeneration,
can yield an overall hybrid system efficiency better than that of the
modern diesel engine -- the leading internal combustion engine in this regard.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles combine the best of electric and
hybrid-drive technologies...What is more, these plug-in hybrids
should not be much more complex, heavy or pricey than present hybrid
models. First, their internal combustion engines will shrink as their
electric motors and batteries grow. Second, batteries and electronic
components have been steadily dropping in price.

A conventional auto costs about 12 cents a mile to operate at current
gasoline prices. A plug-in hybrid could run on electrons at three
cents a mile using electricity costing about eight cents a
kilowatt-hour, the current average residential rate. And given that
half of American cars travel only 25 miles a day or less, a plug-in
with a battery capable of providing power for a 20-mile range could
cut petroleum-based fuel consumption by as much as 60 percent. Even a
long-distance commuter driving a plug-in hybrid could go most of a
typical day on less expensive electricity stored in an advanced
batter that was topped up overnight via a conventional wall socket
and partially recharged at work during the day.

Plug-in hybrids offer other unique benefits....One can speculate that
a utility might lease a plug-in hybrid to a consumer or business
willing to leave the vehicle connected when it was not on the road
and to permit the utility to control when the vehicle's batter was
charged and discharged depending on its generation or
voltage-regulation needs. Such an arrangement would help utilities
with load balancing, for instance.

For policymakers concerned about global warming, plug-in hybrids hold
an edge over another highly touted green vehicle technology --
hydrogen cars. Plug-ins would be better at utilizing zero-carbon
electricity because the overall hydrogen fueling process is
inherently costly and inefficient. Any effective hydrogen economy
would require an infrastructure that could use zero-carbon power to
electrolyze water into hydrogen, convey this highly diffuse gas long
distances, and pump it at high pressure into the car -- all for the
purpose of converting the hydrogen back into electricity in a fuel
cell to drive an electric motor. The entire process of electrolysis,
transportation, pumping and fuel-cell conversion would leave only
about 20 to 25 percent of the original zero-carbon electricity to
drive the motor. In a plug-in hybrid, the process of electricity
transmission, charging an onboard battery would leave 75 to 80
percent of the original electricity to drive the motor. Thus a
plug-in should be able to travel three to four times farther on a
kilowatt-hour of renewable electricity than a hydrogen fuel cell could.

If current trends in fuel costs and concerns about climate change
continue, we expect a broad market transition around the year 20020,
when hybrids are likely to become a option for most models.
Relatively soon thereafter, we believe plug-in hybrids will probably
become the dominant alternative-fuel vehicle, with the speed of that
progress determined primarily by oil price rises and government
policy on climate change and energy security. Whenever the world's
transportation system finally moves to replace oil as its main power
source, the most plausible car design would be a flexible-fuel,
plug-in hybrid vehicle running on a combination of zero-carbon
electricity and a biofuel blend. If the performance of batteries were
to improve substantially at some point, drivers might then gradually
switch to all-electric cars. It makes senses for us to adopt this
highly practical personal transportation technology as expeditiously
as possible.

WHERE TO EXPLORE
- The Car and Fuel of the Future, Joseph Romm, Report for the
Natiional Commission on Energy Policy. Available at:
http://www.energyandclimate.org
- Driving the Solution: The Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle. Lucy Sanna in
EPRI Journal Fall 2005. Available at http://www.epri.com or
http://mydocs.epri.com/docs/CorporateDocuments/EPRI_Journal/2005-Fall/1012885_PH\
EV.pdf
- To learn more about plug-ins, visit http://www.calcars.org
- To learn more about hybrids, visit http://www.hybridcars.com
- Andrew A. Frank's technical articles on plug-ins can be found at
http://www.team-fate.net