There's little doubt that some form of electric vehicle will be the future of transportation. The problems of sufficient on-board storage to provide an acceptable range will eventually be overcome. However, the root problem will remain the generation of electric power. Coal is not acceptable from an environmental perspective. Natural gas is better but is still a fossil fuel. Right now operating a total electric vehicle will only reduce the carbon footprint of that vehicle by about 20%. We're moving in the right direction by exploring alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles but we don't yet know what will work best. I wish I could be around in 50 years to see what we actually wind up using.

Steve Elms
Chairman, Automotive Technology Department
Coordinator, Alternative Fuel Program
Tarrant County College
Fort Worth, Texas

Steve's comment is certainly important to rembember; however, I put in solar electric on my home 5 years ago. I can generate my own electricity and don't put any power on the grid.

15 years ago I bought a Toyota Camery which was 10 years old. At that time it got 35 miles to the gallon. I refuse to buy another car that doesn't get at least 100 miles to the gallon. Imagine that a 10 year old car got 5 miles less to the gallon than what is purported to be great fuel ecomomy today - 40 mpg. It's shameful.

My car is now 25 years old and has 238,000 miles. It get's lower mileage now, but is still working fine.

I'll buy a new car when there is one worth buying and one that shows substantive improvement in mileage and environmental impact on cost of production.

Adding a charging interface and gradually increasing the battery capacity of existing hybrid vehicles is a sensible, incremental approach, and I think it will be a winning market strategy. This is essentially what Toyota appears to be doing. Rather than try to invent a complete new platform, like the Volt, Toyota is starting with a very popular and reliable vehicle--the Prius--and extending it with plug-in capabilities.

I've been driving a Prius equipped like this for a full year now, and my total miles divided by total gallons of gas used comes out to 69 mpg. I would have done a lot better if I could have charged at work, since the battery capacity lasts just long enough for my trip to work. And, the average is dragged down by two vacations, where I could rarely charge the battery.

For the first 30 miles after a full charge, my car gets about 100 mpg.

If Toyota can bring out an affordable 15-mile PHEV an then gradually improve the range, they have a good chance to dominate the PHEV market.

And, I have a PV system at home, too, so I'm not worried about the emissions from power generation. And, even for folks whow have only grid power, in northern CA, we use only 4% coal in our power mix, so it's not such a bad thing to use grid power instead of gasoline.

I had a solar powered electric vehicle, powered with my own panels on my roof. Even generating relatively clean power (ie, not including the carbon and water footprint of the creation of the solar panels), after one year the numbers didn't look very promising.

After one year and about 10,000 miles, I had saved .2 tons of carbon on my vehicle carbon footprint. The creation of the vehicle was around 100 tons, but even possibly higher due to the lithium ion batteries (1600 of them). The cost return on investment was horrid, as is the carbon effectiveness, at around a 350 year payback. I actually increased my carbonfootprint.

I'm not saying that electric and hybrid cars are bad, as clearly this one did not function as well as expected (cold temps hurt battery life, vehicle had a low MPG, was heavy, etc) , nor do I drive enough, which would increase the return on investment and carbon reduction effectiveness.

The lesson we should learn is that significantly reducing our footprints to 2 tons involves public transportation, bicycles, working where you live, not driving etc. Electric vehicles will be a part of the picture, but we need to run the numbers on each model and consider that we need a vehicle with a high MPG and not just make an inefficient electric vehicle or hybrid. Cars in europe get upto 90 mpg without being electric or hybrid. There are some good hybrids coming out - that are more efficient such as the plug in prius in 2011.

We need cost-effective carbon-effective low-cost and no-cost action items to happen first. I've shown that the first 30% of a home or business carbon footprint can be low cost or no cost. Illustrating glamourous technology may look good, but we have to do basic accounting to see if the result is what we want it to be.

Read the Innovator's Dilemma. It explains why an established market leader would not invest in a disruptive technology with relatively small market potential in year 1. Of course electric cars aren't ready for the "mass market." Of course the major automakers looking to find a new model to sell billions are going to be less excited about electric cars that won't sell anywhere near that volume the first few years.

I heat my house with a geothermal heat pump. Some of the same arguments about the source of electricity have been applied to the use of heat pumps. The fallacy is the assumption that our generating mix stays the same. I buy all of my electricity from our local "WindSource" program. Some will argue that this is not scalable, which is true if this is the only thing done, however, adoption of PHEV's and geothermal heat pumps will not be instantaneous. As long as the requirement is put in that no additional coal be burned, the environment will come out ahead. If the requirement be made that any additional 'net' load come from renewable sources, then the environment will greatly benefit.

Since my business partners and I are opening an electric scooter shop in Austin, TX, I feel obligated to let the green community (and others know). See: www.electricavenuescooters.com

The rationale we have are:
1. Scooter transportation is more energy efficient that car transportation by virtue of its lower mass, ease of production and recycling and smaller space requirements. I think Alison is on the right track with smaller more appropriate transportation, like bicycles, and public transportation wherever applicable. The public on the whole should become more aware of its wasteful addition to the car.

2. Parking, charging, and maneuvering a scooter is easier and has less impact than even the smallest car.

3. This "distruptive technology" (thanks Rob) is quality manufactured in China and should help awaken some of the incumbent transportation makers into more meaningful action. Right now, carmakers are still very much abetting the car addition that many people have. I just want to see what we might get from Toyota, etc. when some "upstart" companies begin eroding the market shares of our incumbent automakers.

While I love the idea of a plug-in car, we live in a second-floor apartment with no “off-street” parking…!