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The United States could replace 180 million cars and trucks – 84 percent of its fleet – with plug-in hybrids without taxing the existing power grid, according to a new U.S. Department of Energy study released today. That could mean a substantial cut in greenhouse gas emissions, even with a big increase in electricity production from coal-fired power plants. That’s because eliminating global warming emissions from individual power plants is far easier and cheaper to do than from hundreds of millions of vehicles, concluded the report’s authors at the energy department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richmond, Washington. The report did not consider electricity generated from nuclear, hydro or renewable energy sources when calculating the grid’s capacity to support plug-in hybrids. But if the U.S. made a push to switch to plug-in hybrid vehicles, the authors predicted the jump in electricity demand would promote the construction of solar power stations and wind farms to replace aging coal plants. Another big benefit: smog levels in cities like Los Angeles would drop dramatically if the nation plugged in. To create a plug-in hybrid you swap out the car’s battery for a bigger rechargeable lithium ion version so it relies much less on its gas engine. "Since gasoline consumption accounts for 73 percent of imported oil, it is intriguing to think of the trade and national security benefits if our vehicles switched from oil to electrons," PNNL energy researcher Rob Pratt said in a statement. The researchers said that adding "smart grid" technology would allow utilities to detect when hybrid cars are plugged in so they could be charged only in off-peak hours. Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the nation’s largest utilities, is working on such a system. See Green Wombat’s A Plug-In Prius that Powers Your House.
Green Wombat 
Does this report take into account the transmission capabilities of the grid? There may be plenty of generating capacity in the United States, but the transmission infrastructure that is required to transfer the power is another matter. The blackout of much of the Northeast several years ago due to a power line failure serves to highlight the decrepit state of much of this infrastructure. In theory, the grid can handle the extra demand. However, in practice sections of the grid are overtaxed as is, and brownouts or blackouts are a fact of life under extreme load conditions. It happens every summer when the temperature spikes, and adding the load of millions of vehicles won’t help matters any. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the plug-in hybrid is the way of the future, but the US needs a significant infrastructure investment in order to ensure that the grid is truly robust enough to handle the increased demand.
There are probably two ways alternative fueled cars are going to go – hydrogen or plug-in electric. Growing corn for ethanol will be much more difficult in order to produce the quantities needed by all transportation vehicles – planes, trains and automobiles (not enough arid land to farm for this).
As for possible blackouts – too bad. Cars will only be allowed to charge at night, during off-peak hours.
In 40 years there will be no oil. This will occur during your’s or your children’s lifetimes. There will also be no summer ice in the polar regions due to global warming from CO2 emmissions from cars. This could cause incredible climatic change. It could shut down the ocean currents – that keep the UK and Norther Europe relatively mild considering its lattitude.
As oil becomes more scarce, geopolitical problems and conflicts will multiply. America needs to free itself from the oil addiction now.
Whatever the technical limitations, whatever the challenges, America MUST overcome them. We no longer have the luxury to ignore this problem. The world needs to harness cheap and plentiful hydrogen. This is humanity’s greates challenge and it could be our greates defeat.
The report found that there is “sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for all of today’s vehicles if they ran on batteries,” according to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
So which auto manufacturer is planning to make plug-in hybrid that doesn’t look dorky or geeky.
I’ll buy that vendor car