“Our dependence on petroleum is so unhealthy in so many ways, both individually and for the world. In the United States, one third of the greenhouse gases that we produce comes out of vehicle tail pipes. Another third comes out of power plant smokestacks, so we need to clean them both up simultaneously.
“It just so happens that the quickest way to clean up cars is to plug them in, because even on the current grid, it’s cleaner than gasoline. But once we start producing more electricity from cleaner sources, like solar and wind, it just gets cleaner and cleaner, while gasoline gets dirtier.
“Individually, people may think it’s some kind of compromise to have to plug in a car and drive on electricity instead of being able to stop for gasoline when they want to. It’s really not. It’s kind of liberating. You no longer have nasty stuff coming out of your tailpipe. You’re no longer doing oil changes. We’re no longer feeding money into the countries that control the oil and petroleum, many of whom don’t particularly like us.
“So, it liberates the country, it liberates individuals from polluting and leaving a nasty legacy for our grandchildren. There is no real downside to driving on electricity.
“The only downside people have found with all electric cars is the range. How far can you go before you need to plug in? And although fast chargers do exist, so it could be just like pulling into a gas station and charging very quickly - that involves installing a whole new infrastructure.
“Rather, what we’ll see are the plug-in hybrids where you just plug in overnight while you’re sleeping, you drive most of the time on electricity, but you have a fuel tank as a back-up for long distance. And that can be biodiesel, E85 Ethanol, whatever we come up with that’s the best option in terms of liquid fuels.”
Sherry Boschert is the author of Plug-In Hybrids.
