News from the IEEE's Spectrum:
By Glenn Zorpette
When it comes to our cars and the environment, we are all slightly sociopathic—even those movie stars in their Toyota Priuses. It's just a matter of degree.
If you commute 25 km each way to work in a mid-sized car, you make an annual contribution to the Earth's atmosphere of about 5500 kg of carbon dioxide and 1300 grams of the pollutant brew known as smog, according to a study by the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. A comparable conventional hybrid vehicle, such as the justly venerated Prius, will cut those emissions by roughly 25 percent and 15 percent, respectively, EPRI says.
Now add an electrical outlet plug to that hybrid, a bigger battery, and a few other modest changes, and a remarkable thing happens. "What you get is this very efficient vehicle on gasoline that can also be an electric vehicle, which is even more efficient," says Mark Duvall, an expert on hybrid vehicles at EPRI.
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