A note about the “plug-in hybrid”. Although it’s technically very feasible, it is in many ways the worst of both worlds instead of the best of both worlds because of the weight. There are four components in a car that weigh a lot:

1. Internal combustion engine
2. Electric engine
3. Batteries.
4. Gas

-A traditional car only has #1 and #4 but both have to be big.
-A electric car only as #2 and #3 but they both have to be big.
-A hybrid has all 4 but each one can be made smaller than the dedicated solution because they all share in the load.
-A plug in hybrid has a medium #4, a big #1 and #3 and a super sized #2.

One would think that the plug in hybrid would be just like a regular one but just with a big #3. However, that extra weight requires a big #2 to compensate, one that is even bigger than the pure electric since we’re lugging around a small #1. To add insult to injury, in hybrid mode, because of the reduced efficiency of the electric portion #1 and #4 need to be bigger as well.

The place consumers would most visibly see the effect of this would be the fuel economy and electric range. The fuel economy would be worse that the pure hybrids (albeit better than traditional cars) and the electric range would be pretty small.

While there is still hope for the plug-in hybrid, the technical challenges to get it to where the efficiency numbers aren’t depressing (and seeing how the point of all of this is efficiency that’s pretty important) is more difficult than people think.

The thing that jumped out at me was that we drive on average 30 miles a day … well if you target in that range then half of the time you are going to run out of energy. Need to look at the 99.9% point of the distribution.

The simple one for me was imagining having to drive one of these across the country for a move, something I have done 5 times now. Even if you had a recharge station whenever you needed and could get to 500 miles per charge that would still have you stopping for 5 hours 6 times. Essentially, you now have a car that if you want to move far you have to ship, which would not fit in my ideal world.

The obvious target audience here is as a second car which is only used for commuting assuming you know exactly where you are going. If in the middle of the work day you figure out you need to travel to your kid’s sporting event an hour away you can forget about it. For good or bad, what the gas engine has done is allowed us to not have to plan at all, which is a hard habit to break.

And then there was the end, with the “guilty”‘s and “not guilty” came off very unprofessional (ok, so that was a fair criticism of the whole film) … but to me to pretend that battery techonology and cost does not play a role is naive. Today we have the perfect test bed – everybody loves a Prius which can be retrofitted to a plug-in hybrid, but the range is very low. If it was a really viable option we would see a huge push on that front in my opinion.

I should say that in general I am for better fuel economy and probably even more government oversight of this … and that I drive a Civic hybrid myself.

I enjoyed the movie as entertainment, but as information I found it too biased to really trust what they are saying to any large degree.

Thanks,
Brian