John Petersen

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

Fitz, another wonderfully informative piece (as usual). A new article came out in Wired this morning and really made my day. It will probably leave you feeling a bit vindicated too.

The City of Seattle has reported that its fleet of plug-in Prius retrofits only averaged 51 mpg over the last year as compared to the 100 mpg everybody expected. Apparently comparable results are being seen by the Idaho National Laboratory which is following a nationwide test fleet.

The title is priceless - Plug-in Hybrids: More Hype than Hope?

www.wired.com/cars/coo.../

H.R. 1835: Legislation for Natural Gas Transportation

While I spend all my time writing about storage, I'm a firm believer that we need to use every available tool in the box and focus first on slowing the export of cash in exchange for oil. As that battle progresses, we can devote more attention to building out new power generating facilities and the smart grid and developing EV solutions that work. The biggest problem I see with trying to force longer term solutions into the short term is that you don't give the key technologies enough time to really mature. In my mind, this is one of those journeys of a thousand miles and I don't think any of us can do more than vaguely describe some of the mile-markers we are likely to pass en-route to the finish line. I'll guarantee that none of us can accurately describe 2060.