Hybrid Mania

The AP has a very promising article this weekend on advances in hybrid car technology to reduce American foreign oil dependence.

Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 mpg

Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage.

It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret — a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel.

Reading the details of the article, you can see that the 250 mpg figure is an absolute extreme, achieved rarely in vehicles with huge, cost prohibitive modifications and only under certain driving conditions. But that doesn't take away from the fact that apparently a number of people have hybrids with plug-in modifications which can easily surpass 80 mpg in normal driving conditions. Yes, plugging a car in takes more energy off the grid, but the grid is where we can achieve the most ground via alternative energy. Vehicles are the hardest area to cut down on oil consumption.

You lose most (if not all) of your trunk space, etc. to get these results, so it's obviously not some sort of panacea which is just around the corner. That doesn't mean it's without value, though. As James Joyner points out:

This is hardly a practical solution for a family vacation but would meet the needs of most commuters. One suspects that continued high prices for gasoline would make mass marketing Gremban's technology economically feasible.

The "average" driver in our country right now is barely getting 30 to 35 mpg. If this technology can more than double it and it's technology which could be on the market very shortly, there's no reason not to pursue it.

As with everything else, when science goes against the agenda of the neocons, you will quickly see scorn being poured on it from the usual list of suspects. Check out not only this entry from Wizbang, but more particularly the comments section. This is something that represents a chance to use less oil, so the derision is poured on in heavy doses.

The AP is doing its best to spread the ever growing "250mpg hybrid" myth. Back during the first gas crunch the stories were everywhere that someone had developed a carburetor that would give 500mpg but the greedy oil companies killed him [bought him out etc] and refused to let the technology come to market. Even respected publications like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics hinted that this technology was out there "somewhere."

Absolutely disgusting.