The other day I responed to a mass email saying that I thought electric cars are still not very green because our power plants are still not very green. I got a response from one of the recipients saying the following, which I found useful:

I think you are wrong to condem all plug in vehicles however. A typical battery electric car, whether fully electric or a plug in hybrid is very efficient. Our electric vehicles generally use about 0.3kWh for each mile travelled. From a cost perspective this means less than $.04 per mile in fuel cost, (about a quarter the cost of gasoline), create no local emissions when driving, and are refueled from the solar panels on the roof of our home.

Even when fueled from a coal power plant the emissions, from a plug-in car are far less than gasoline in almost every category. Check out the following presentation from Mark Kapner at Austin energy who has studied this at length.

http://airquality2005.tamu.edu/presentations/Plug%20In%20Hybrid.pdf

I beleive strongly that Plug-in vehicles are a very important part of our transportation future for both environmnental and economic concerns. You can find more information on the web-site for a group that I'm involoved with

www.pluginamerica.com

Please drop me an e-mail if you'd like more information or to discuss in more detail. mikewkane@yahoo.com