A few random notes from a good session at CERAWeek on getting the electric grid ready for electric cars:

* Utilities actually are thinking about a long-time human practice: "keeping up with the Joneses." The formal word for it from the utility perspective is "clustering," and it would be described this way: Somebody in an affluent neighborhood buys a Chevy Volt, or some other plug-in hybrid. Their neighbors, wanting to show their green credentials -- both for the environment and what's in their wallet -- decided that they want one too. And so do a few other people on the same block or cul-de-sac. The result, from the utility's perspective, is that if all these cars in that very small area are recharging their plug-in hybrids overnight, that could be a problem. So while the grid for almost all utilities is big enough to handle plug-in hybrids over the entire service area, it may not be big enough for pockets of affluence that can, and will, plunk down $40k for the new hot car.



* The electric vehicle industry has a proposal floating around where an owner of a near-drained battery would go to a battery-swapping station, have an attendant remove the existing battery and stick in a new one, rather than go through a possibly longer duration to recharge the existing battery. Time for this exercise: maybe 10 minutes. One problem: batteries are expensive. So for this to work, a supply of 1,000 batteries to power 1,000 cars now needs to become maybe 1,300 batteries, since consumers will always need to have a supply of batteries sitting around, waiting to step onto the dance floor. Those costs will need to be borne by the car buyers, making the plug-in hybrid even more expensive.



* Cost came up over and over in the panel. Glen Stancil, vice president for electric vehicle services at Reliant, the giant utility company, said the marketing of EVs and plug-in hybrids will need to promote "a new customer experience." The marketing message could involve the environmental impact or the pleasure of not needing to go to the gas pump for anything other than the occasional fill-up in a plug-in. But that only goes so far; the panelists agreed that cost will be a determining factor. But the cost equation is not just the price of a gasoline car vs. a plug-in; it's the size of the gasoline savings. At present, the panel said the cost of operating a car on a battery is about half that of a gasoline car per mile. A plunge in the price of gasoline will erode that advantage.



* John J. Viera, the chief sustainability official at Ford Motor, said there is one thing nobody needs to worry about: the supply of lithium. Bolivia doesn't produce any now, but it has enormous reserves and is expected to be a key supplier. It's also run by an economic nationalist/socialist. But Viera said Ford has studied potential supplies, and is reassured. "We just think there are lithium reserves out there in more stable countries, particularly in the US," Viera said, even citing deposits in the Carolinas as a potential source. He also said lithium-ion battery recycling hasn't even begun, and that's another potential source, but technology and systems need to develop to allow that.