Maggie's Farm

A case for plug-in hybrid cars, with the history of automobile power, by Andrew Frank at American Scientist. My question: If the plug-in power comes from gas- and oil-fueled power plants, what's the difference? Except that it might be easier to control emissions at the plants.

He begins thus:

The idea of a hybrid vehicle—one that propels itself using both a conventional engine and an electric motor—is not new. Indeed, some hybrid automobiles were produced more than a century ago, when the internal combustion engine was still in its infancy. These cars were designed to address the limited range of existing electric vehicles and the difficulty of starting the early engines, which had to be cranked by hand (a procedure that resulted in not a few broken arms). The early hybrid vehicles, and the purely electric cars that dominated the fledgling automobile industry early in the 20th century, eventually gave way to a proliferation of cars based on the now-ubiquitous internal combustion engine, a development made possible by the relatively low cost and widespread availability of gasoline.

Read the whole thing - link above.