"Compare the efficiency of an EV to a gas car over 100 miles. A Hummer, Suburban or Navigator, at 10 mpg, takes 10 gallons to go 100 miles. Our fleet average car gets 20 mpg, and requires 5 gallons to go 100 miles. Even a Prius, at 50 mpg, takes 2 gallons of gas to go 100 miles. The aerodynamic Honda Insight takes 1.6 gallons of gas to go 100 miles. But an EV goes 100 miles with no gasoline and no oil, on the energy equivalent of less than one gallon of gasoline. No smog checks, no exhaust, no tune-ups, no oil changes."

When will our leaders figure out that we don't need their oil and thus have no real reason to dominate the oil producing regions, no reason to subsidize protection of overseas oil supply lines, no reason to bomb Iraq. All it takes is the will to produce plug-in cars capable of driving 100 all-electric miles per day. Most of our driving is local: 80% of our miles are driven on round-trips less than 80 miles from home.

A serial plug-in hybrid that runs just like an EV at up to 80 miles per hour for up to 120 miles could be manufactured as easily and as reliably as the RAV4-EV. The serial hybrid has a small (40 hp) generator/engine that runs at constant speed to charge the battery on occasional long trips or if you forget to plug it in. We can do this: all it takes is the decision to allow people to join the "PV-EV" crowd, who vow to live essentially "oil-free."

Allowing more folks to drive all-electric cars lowers demand for gasoline, and should lower the price of gas for everyone else. So who, except the profit-bloated oil companies and their captive politicians, would oppose PV-EV?

In California, our installed capacity is 60,000 megawatts and off-peak unused capacity is about 30,000 megawatts for 18 hours (integrating under the curve on the state website, caiso.com), or about 540,000 megawatt-hours. That's 540 million kWh of unused electric capacity per day.


That's more than the 200 million kWh per day it would take to convert ALL oil-fueled miles to electric-powered miles, by a substantial margin, and without building one new power plant.