At RechargeIT.org, a Google.org project, they have built a few plug-in hybrid Prius's and now have several months data about real world fuel use. They have found an improved miles/gallon efficiency from 44.6, for a regular Prius, to 66.2 miles/gallon for their plugin Prius's. This results in 0.4115 CO2e lbs/mile for the plugin Prius, 0.530 CO2e lbs/mile for a regular Prius, compared to 1.192 0.530 CO2e lbs/mile as the U.S. fleet average. There are various impressive savings in the amount of fuel and in the pollution spewed into the atmosphere, but when they derive a cost savings it is pretty minor. The plug-in Prius saves $1168 per year versus $1010 savings per year for the regular Prius.
This allows the C|NET reporter to portray this in a negative light. He goes through the calculation of the period of time to pay off the extra investment to convert the Prius into a plug-in hybrid. Since the conversion costs $15,000 and the savings are shown to be only $158 per year it's clearly going to take a long time for cost savings to pay for the conversion. But I think that's missing the point.
As the Google spokesperson says:
"They (owners) are never going to pay off the price" of a retrofit, Proudfoot acknowledged. "But the big focus for RechargeIT is on the CO2 savings, not the cost savings."
In particular I think the cost of the environment and the true cost of oil is not properly valuated in dollars. If you look only at dollar cost and dollar benefit you will miss the real cost and real benefit.
The real cost is the poison in the environment and the potential for global warming to cause sea levels to rise. The real benefit is the continued enjoyment of this beautiful planet.
Re: The payoff for plug-in hybrids: 95 years?
Well, the point would be to find the best solutions to reduce CO2 emissions in many different areas at the lowest cost per tonne of CO2 avoided. This is the idea behind cap-and-trade policies: set a price on carbon emissions, and let the market work out how much each product we consume contributes to that cost, which is currently an "externality."
Even applying a carbon tax is intended to have a similar effect: let each area of the economy work through that imposed cost, to reflect the lost value of the externalized damage from the CO2 emissions. Once you find the "right" price for the carbon tax, buyers can look at the new pricing of all products and understand that some part of that is the price signal from the need to reduce CO2.
Buying carbon offsets is a kind of private system for the same goal as cap-and-trade: you pay someone else to do a project that reduces CO2, for any activity you are not willing to give up but which still causes some CO2 emission.
You can't just say "no price is too high to pay to save one unit of CO2" - there is a limit to what we can all afford to pay, and we have to focus on which reductions give the most bang for the buck.
The more distressing prospect is that as worldwide oil is approaching (or already past?) "peak oil" we face growing shortfalls in the supply of fossil fuels. These are not cyclical or geopolitical moments that will pass - this is the permanent future of less oil per capita, dropping year after year. Biofuels will not make up the difference. We have to burn less oil every year from now on because there just won't be as much out there to buy. Even drilling ANWR and the polar seas aren't going to change this. Oil is peaking and will decline from here on out. We need to get that idea through our heads and begin to adapt. We have done next to nothing to prepare up to now.
Given that, the price of gas at the pump is not safe from even more steep increases than we have already seen. If that comes in the near-term, we'll need every option to be able to keep moving goods and people on far, far less fuel than in the past.
Plug-in hybrids are likely to play a key part in adapting to the coming oil crisis. We will need to shift from driving on oil to driving on electricity; plug-in hybrids are the key transition step, with pure electric cars such as the GM Volt, the Tesla Roadster, the Zenn, and so on as the final destination.
Unlike the oil supply, we still have room to grow the electricity supply, by building really substantial amounts of renewables including concentrating solar thermal plants like the prototype in Arizona; way way more solar panels as dozens of new plants are being built and prices will finally start to become approachable; thousands and thousands of large wind turbines; (maybe also new nuclear plants, but I'll leave that debate for now) and big efforts to reduce waste of power, starting with banning incandescent bulbs as already beginning to happen.
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