Electric vehicles are on course to make their debut this fall. But they got an unexpected boost in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has just sponsored legislation to advance the cause.

This country's voracious appetite for oil is adding to pollution rates as well as aiding countries unfriendly to its interest. By encouraging the use of electric cars, policymakers are attempting to address the issues of oil addiction and air emissions, although it is unclear just how successful they will be at either one.

"Oil dependence is not a conservative or a liberal issue -- it is a threat to our entire nation, and we are thankful that these leaders in the House and Senate have come together to face it head on," says Robbie Diamond, chief executive of the Electrification Coalition.

The group released late last year a roadmap that calls for the creation of a national infrastructure to promote the use of more electric vehicles. The efforts would begin in key geographic regions involving urbanized populations where citizens would welcome the idea and where they would need recharging stations.

To that end, the coalition commissioned a study that concludes that the typical U.S. household would spend less per year directly on energy for transportation if cars were electrified. By 2030, they would save about $3,600 in 2008 dollars. It also said that U.S. crude oil and petroleum product imports would fall 3.2 million barrels per day by 2030. Cumulatively, between 2010 and 2030, the United States would import nearly 11.9 billion fewer barrels of foreign oil.

Prior to the Gulf oil spill, the U.S. Congress had backed efforts to facilitate the growth of the electric car. It has provided up to $7,500 in tax credits and as much as $25 billion to develop alternative fuels.

But the new proposals go even further: The Senate measure would offer $2,500 more to consumers in tax credits while providing up to $250 million in grants to 15 different jurisdictions to build the infrastructure. The House's version would give consumers $2,000 more in credits while allocating $800 million in grants to five disparate areas.

While bipartisan, the bills are in keeping with the Obama administration's theme of building a new economy based on green technologies. The White House has challenged the auto industry to get 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. The industry has said it expects 700,000 of them to be on the road in a few years.

"I believe we are on the cusp of the next great tectonic shift in our economy, one that will transform the way we use energy both in our homes and on the road," says David Crane, chief executive of NRG Energy, in a speech.

The Potholes

GM plans to introduce its Chevy Volt by November. It will be a plug-in hybrid that is powered by a stack of lithium batteries. The car will able to run 40 miles between juice-ups at which point a small gasoline engine creates electricity using a generator to extend the Volt's range to more than 300 miles. Meantime, Nissan will unveil its all-electric Leaf around the same time. That car is expected to run 100 miles before it would have to be recharged.

In the case of GM, it says that the difference between its modern version of the electric car and its failed model from a generation ago is that the older one did not have a back-up fuel supply. Therefore, it could only go short distances. But the company emphasizes that without the accompanying infrastructure, national goals to put more such cars on the road will fall short.

Beyond the obvious concerns, there's the issue of displacing the internal combustion engine. The technologies work. But whether they will be reliable is another question as is whether the technologies to support them will get better and cheaper with experience. For Detroit's part, it says that the all-electric vehicle will become part of its domain and that it will export this knowledge.

There's also the matter over whether the utilities providing the power will be able to deliver. While utilities say that they will be able to gear up to meet this challenge, others are saying not-so-fast. That's because they worry about what fuels would be used to power-up those electric cars. If it is predominately coal, they say it would do nothing to improve air emissions and would only exacerbate climate change.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles emit less carbon dioxide than their counterparts in the conventional world. After the emissions at generating stations that supply their electrical power are incorporated, however, they cannot sustain that advantage, says a report issued last December by the National Research Council.

Beyond 2030, the council says that plug-in hybrids could account for significant reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. But it adds that will only happen if electricity generation plants fired by fossil fuels are equipped with carbon capture and storage systems or replaced with renewable energy or nuclear-powered plants. With coal expected to supply the preponderance of electric generation for decades to come, it says that the overall benefits to electric cars will be nominal.

The good news is that the country has expanded its thinking. Alternative modes of transportation are now making headway. The dependency on foreign oil supplies triggered the movement. The Gulf oil spill and concerns over climate change have only accelerated it. If the new path is to pay off, though, utilities must provide a cleaner and more efficient source of power to fuel these vehicles.



 

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