Jones Beene wrote:
You can see that in California, where coal is hardly used, PHEV
would greatly reduce CO2.
Not "green" enough... and a potential liability.
Why not green enough? As shown in Fig. 3 of Minnesota study, with the
power generating system in California today, PHEV would reduce CO2 by
half. With increased use of wind, solar thermal and geothermal, it
would reduce it from 400 g/mile to 50 g/mile. No other present-day
system can come close to that, except fully-electric vehicles, and
they still do not have enough range for many drivers.
Lithium batteries are still having too many problems to be
considered reliable and the cost is going up, not down - due to
liability issues. After 15 years of mass production and refinement
by the best companies (Sony etc), Lithium cells are still catching
fire in computers . . .
Actually, the PHEV developers at HybridCars.com recommend NiMH batteries. See:
http://www.hybridcars.com/plug-in-hybrids/phev-battery-types.html
But in any case, regarding the liability issue, how often do lithium
batteries burn? Apart from the particular brands that are known to
have problems and have been recalled, out of each 1 million batteries
how many burn? Compare this to the number of automobiles that burn
from gasoline. Cars and trucks often catch on fire; I have seen many,
but I have never seen a battery burn. There have been many recalls of
automobile engines for gasoline fire hazards. This is a problem, but
it not so bad that it precludes the use of gasoline.
- Jed
