SAN FRANCISCO — The concept sounds like a no-brainer for the Bay Area, given the number of gasoline-electric hybrid automobiles on the road.
But the idea came from Texas:
Push automakers to develop hybrid vehicles that churn out 100 miles to the gallon or more, and watch energy imports and greenhouse gas emissions drop off.
Last summer, Austin city leaders and their local utility, Austin Energy, launched such an effort, with the utility providing $1million in seed money for the purchase of next-generation hybrids. Wednesday, state and regional leaders committed the Bay Area to the program, dubbed “Plug-in Bay Area.”
Terry Tamminen, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s senior adviser on science and the environment, offered the state’s endorsement.
Jack Broadbent, top executive of the Bay Area’s air district, said advances driving the next generation of hybrids represents “an important technology that needs to get out there in the public’s hands.”
The first goal, organizers said Wednesday, is to get manufacturers to accelerate development of 100-mpg hybrids.Plug-in Bay Area’s supporters hope to persuade government agencies to use the considerable pressure of fleet purchases to steer the technology forward.
Hybrids today — such as the Toyota Prius — use a gasoline engine to supplement the electric motor and recharge the car’s batteries. The next generation, often called “plug-in hybrids,” are expected to contain beefier batteries and a plug, giving drivers the option of bypassing the gasoline engine entirely and recharging batteries via a standard electrical outlet.
Today’s hybrids typically get from 40 to 50 miles per gallon, about 20 percent more than they would obtain without hybridization. A plug-in hybrid, supporters maintain, can easily top 100 mpg and offer tremendous potential in reducing fuel consumption and air pollution.
It could also provide a boon to electric utilities looking to sell off-peak power: A typical plug-in hybrid owner would drive the car all day, return home in the evening and plug it in, drawing power at the exact time a utility would like to sell it.
“You will never know the difference when you drive a plug-in hybrid,” said Bob Graham of the Electric Power Research Institute, one of the program’s backers. “You could put a plug-in hybrid in your pickup, your SUV, your minivan and drive it and never notice the difference.
“It is just a road map to using electric-drive technology to reduce emissions.”
The hitch is battery technology. Durability is a chief concern, said Irv Miller, spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales Inc., the nation’s leading seller of hybrid cars. Cost is another.
“Toyota is looking very seriously at the issue,” said Miller. “But the battery technology right now doesn’t support moving forward. We just don’t feel confident bringing the batteries to market.”
Those spreading the gospel of plug-in hybrids Wednesday hope that, as volume builds, costs drop and durability concerns fade, plug-in hybrids will quickly filter into the mass market.
Maybe so. Toyota’s Miller recalled how a similar sense of hope and promise swept the activist community when automakers, in response to an all-but-rescinded California mandate, rolled out electric vehicles in the 1990s.
“Those folks didn’t emerge as purchasers or leasees,” Miller cautioned. “And for the technology to survive and propagate, you need to translate emotion and energy into a market.”