The Rebirth of the Electric Car??

Last year's documentary by Chris Paine entitled Who Killed the Electric Car? told the story of the ill-fated EV1, the fully electric car introduced by GM in California in the mid-90s. Although I definitely recommend checking out the film, you don't need to actually watch it know that the EV1 is no longer around. The film explores various causes for the automobile's demise, but, unsurprisingly, big auto and politics were the chief culprits.

However, in a move that I believe caught many people by surprise, GM unveiled at the recent Detroit Auto Show the Chevy Volt , an electric-gasoline hybrid that could be available as early as 2010. Of course, the Prius has been around since 2000, so what makes this hybrid any different? Well, unlike the Prius or other hybrids currently on the market, the Chevy Volt could potentially run forever without using a single drop of gasoline. After charging the battery at home for 6 hours, the Volt can go 40 miles on battery power alone. GM asserts that the majority of Americans live within 20 miles of work, so if that's the case, a normal weekday commute could be done completely using battery-powered electricity. When in fact a person needs to drive more than 40 miles without re-charging the battery, a three-cylinder engine kicks in to burn fuel to recharge the battery, potentially boosting fuel economy to 150 miles per gallon! Furthermore, the engine is equipped to burn E85, which is 85/15 ethanol/gasoline mix. The use of E85, they claim, would mean that the car could go over 525 miles per gallon of petroleum. While there are still some concerns surrounding the efficiency of ethanol production in the US, I imagine that if the ethanol technology in the US isn't able to meet demand at an acceptable price, we could potentially import ethanol from more efficient (and friendlier) nations, such as Brazil, until we could rely solely on domestic production.

Given the decades of neglect and self-interest in terms of environmental sustainability, I hope that 2007 will see a growing trend towards greener business, the likes of which we first began seeing on a significant scale in 2006.