PHEVs

I'm really, really looking forward to PHEVs. Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles. They're not a final step to reducing our individual or collective carbon footprint, but they're a really good step along the way.

Hybrid is not the cool part. Electric is the cool part.

PHEV's currently have an electric-only range of about 40 miles. Most of us drive less than 40 miles a day, so that's okay. For most people, most of the time, all we really need is electric cars. We can charge them at night when electricity is cheap, drive them up to 40 miles during the day, and come home and charge them again at night.

Hybridization is what allows you to go more than 40 miles one day, if you have to. When your electric battery runs out of juice as you're tooling down the road then your gasoline motor automatically starts up, allowing you to go the extra mile and charging your electric battery in the process.

If you commute during the week but on weekends you do a lot more driving, then you could probably use absolutely no gasoline during the week, and probably use only a fraction of the gas that you currently use on a typical weekend.

Let's run some numbers here.

Let's assume you drive exactly 40 miles each weekday, and then maybe 50 miles on a weekend day. That's 300 miles a week. At a generous 30 miles to the gallon that's 10 gallons of gas.

Okay, now let's say you've got a PHEV. (I think I'm gonna start pronouncing this as /feev/) In your PHEV you're able not to use any gas at all for 5 days of the week, and then you're still able not to use any gas for 40 of 50 miles on each weekend day. You only need gas for 10 miles a day for each weekend day. That's gas for just 20 miles a week. At a still-generous 30 miles to the gallon that's 2/3 of a gallon.

Yeah, I'm really, really looking forward to PHEVs.

Technically you can have a PHEV now. You would need to buy a regular HEV (heave?) and pay to have it converted into a PHEV, but it's doable. It costs an average of eight thousand dollars. That's on top of the initial cost of the hybrid.

And, see, here's where it gets tough. Let's assume that you are the theoretical driver above who stands to reduce your gasoline consumption significantly by owning a PHEV. At $4 a gallon you'll save about $37.50 a week by driving a PHEV. But at an initial cost of $8000. So it will take you over 4 years to recoup the cost of converting your HEV (did I mention you'd already paid a lot of money for a hybrid...?) into a PHEV.

Oh, and meanwhile you'll be consuming a lot more electricity. Low-rate night-time electricity, but still. So it ends up costing a LOT of money to save a lot of gas:

• You buy a hybrid.
• You spend an additional $8000 to turn your HEV into a PHEV.
• You use a lot more electricity (hopefully electricity generated by wind, but still it's electricity) for which you have to pay.

Something is wrong with the system when you can't afford to save gas.

In a few years, though, you'll be able to buy a ready-made PHEV. Whenever you find yourself in the market for a new car then I suggest you check and see how much a PHEV is then. It will probably be worth it. Especially if the price of gas keeps going up.