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Thinking Out Loud About Plug-In Electric FFVs

Posted: May 5, 2008 at 01:43 PM CST

I spent a few hours at the Living Green Expo in St. Paul, Minn., Saturday, where renewable fuels and alternative fuel vehicles shared the stage with all things green over the weekend. From sustainable architecture and rain barrels to organic coffee and locally grown beef, it was all there.

A few dozen AFVs were on display: gas-electric hybrids, flexible fuel vehicles, BlueTec diesels, fuel cell prototypes and experimental late models. All these exciting cars and trucks, and what caught my eye? A two-year-old Ford Escape electric hybrid FFV research vehicle that’s been on loan to the state of Minnesota since 2006.

On the surface, this borrowed sport utility vehicle is nothing to write home about. But what it represents, in my view, is nothing less than the first generation of disruptive, game-changing technology. You see, I believe the United States could nearly free itself from its dependence on foreign sources of fossil fuels by making a massive, moon-shot-scale switch to plug-in electric FFVs over the course of the next two decades. The 2006 Ford Escape I saw Saturday is not plug-in capable, but it’s a trailblazing concept vehicle that helped spur GM to follow suit this year with the Chevy Volt prototype, a true plug-in FFV hybrid that’s creating an online buzz among environmentalists and car buffs alike.

GM says the Volt, with its E-Flex Propulsion System, will be different than any previous electric vehicle because it will use a lithium-ion battery with a variety of range-extending onboard power sources — possibly including ethanol blends up to E85 — to recharge the battery while driving. When it comes to plugging in, the Volt will be designed to use a common 110-volt household outlet. For people who drive less than 40 miles a day, the Volt will use zero liquid fuel, relying only on its batteries.

Already, more than 20,000 people have signed up on GM’s virtual waiting list to buy a Volt if and when it arrives. The car could be available to the public in 2010, but GM isn’t making any promises.

There are challenges with hybrid electric FFVs, of course. Despite very low tailpipe emissions, E85 and other ethanol blends have higher evaporative emissions than gasoline. Those evaporative emissions aren’t a problem in traditional vehicles — the engine’s vacuum effect essentially keeps the gases under the hood — but when electric hybrids switch from liquid fuel to battery power, those vapors tend to escape. So Ford has been busy working on a more aggressive evaporative system. Last I heard, Ford engineers were pursuing a number of strategies to address this challenge with the goal of achieving partial zero-emissions vehicle (PZEV) status, which no FFV has ever attained. With the red-hot Volt expected to go into limited production in the next few years, GM is presumably working toward the same end.

With that in mind, entertain me for a second as I think out load.

Presume that plug-in electric hybrids that run on electricity and a blend of fossil- and biomass-based fuels become widely available. Let's presume that various blends averaging out at about E30 become standard nationwide. Now, assuming that the United States consumes about 147 billion gallons of gasoline per year, imagine that plug-in electric hybrids achieve a 50 percent market share by 2025, reducing the nation's gasoline consumption to about 110 billion gallons per year. With about a third of that gasoline demand being met by ethanol and other advanced biofuels — which would require just over 36 billion gallons per year (the number prescribed by the current U.S. renewable fuels standard by 2022) — only about 75 billion gallons of additional gasoline would have to come from fossil fuels. That demand could be met through a combination of domestic drilling, coal gasification and a reasonable amount of imports.

Where's all the electricity going to come from? Well, that's a good question.

Critics say, first, that plug-in electric-gasoline hybrids are only as clean as the power plant the electricity comes from (i.e., think coal) and, second, that charging millions of these vehicles every day would require more electricity than the nation's current grid can supply. However, Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers recently determined that if plug-in electric vehicles were recharged after 10 p.m. — when the electric load on the system is at a minimum and the wholesale price for energy is least expensive — no new U.S. power plants would be needed. However, if a quarter of all American car owners (they assumed a 25 percent market penetration by 2020) were to simultaneously plug their cars in at 5 p.m., up to 160 new power plants would have to be built. That's a potential show stopper, but programmable chargers, time- and load-specific metering rates and other "sticks and carrots" could solve the problem.

Now, if more power plants were needed, the nation could produce more electricity from wind, solar, and since I am from North Dakota — the land of lignite — I must add clean coal.

Many solar power advocates believe that the entire United States could be powered by solar power if an area equivalent to 10,000 square miles (a 100 mile by 100 mile swath of land) was covered by solar panels in the Southwest. That sounds like a lot of land, and it is, but considering that there are more than 3.7 million square miles of landmass in the United States, it may not be that far fetched of an idea. And this solar field wouldn't literally be 100 miles by 100 miles; it would be broken up and dispersed across a vast region.

So that’s my master plan … that’s what I was daydreaming abut this weekend in St. Paul as I stood over that Ford Escape hybrid. Clearly, it’s a plan that has a hundred holes in it at this point — evaporative emissions, electrical transmission, coal gasification sustainability questions and an assortment of other technological barriers need to be addressed. But, hey, I’m just thinking out loud.

-Tom Bryan