Hybrid cars and V2G

Yesterday, the US Department of Energy announced that an upcoming report has found the US electrical grid could power up to 85% of the existing US fleet if those cars were replaced with electric vehicles. My latest post at Gristmill is about it, and the potential for electric cars to be a massive rolling reservoir for intermittent renewable electricity (wind, solar, etc.)

People sometimes mistake my enthusiasm for new automotive technologies as enthusiasm for the automotive lifestyle - a strike against me in the usual environmental scorebook. The funny thing is I don't own a car and have no desire to. Nevertheless, the reality is that people in western economies like their cars, and especially like the freedom of movement that cars give them. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm easily sold on policies to reduce the use and necessity of cars - gasoline taxes, more mass transit, whatever. But the United States is guaranteed to have at least 150 million cars for the foreseeable future. That being the case, we need to think of ways to make those cars as friendly as possible.