Mike InMich

Ford Partners to Commercialize Electric Cars

Overall a very good article. Way to go Ford! But this statement needs explanation:

" When driven on surface streets for the first 30 miles following a full charge, the Ford Escape PHEV can achieve up to 120 mpg. "

I see a lot of this 100+ MPG stuff when talking about electrics. The problem is that it is hard to define the MPG for a vehicle using energy from the grid. This is not free energy, and is most likely from fossil fuel (coal) in the U.S. We must be careful to not overstate the "green" aspect of PHEVs. I think there is a net gain for the environment for such vehicles, albeit at a great cost, but I suspect the 120 MPG figure overstates this benefit.

Perhaps the author can explain the 120 MPG figure for the readers.

Also, there is a tendancy for the advocates to suggest that only solar or wind power will be used for these cars. But if such power were availaable in the quantities required, such power could just as well have been diverted to other electricity uses and displaced more coal. I think we should use a factor, something on the order of 80%, that represents the percent of electricity in the US from coal when assessing the effect of electric cars on global warming.

There is a great risk of spending a lot of US resources on a over-hyped technology if we don't get this math correct.