Are hybrids and plug-in hybrids “stepping stones”?

Today's Prius hybrid, tomorrows fuel cell hybrid?

Hybrids might outsell pure battery electrics forever

Obviously, I’m a huge fan of hybrid vehicles. However, if I ever buy another car — which I’m not confident I will — there is a good chance it will be a pure battery electric vehicle, rather than a plug-in hybrid or range extended EV.

Nevertheless, the idea that pure battery electric vehicles are the indisputable future is a dangerous idea.

Today, GreenCarReports asks, Do Plug-In Hybrids Matter? Should automakers, the article wonders, skip the development of plug-in hybrids and just move straight to electric cars?

While I believe asking such a question based on today’s hybrid and EV sales coupled with sale’s forecasts through the next decade is just plain silly, I’m not surprised. Electrification is the buzzword in green circles when it comes to the auto industry. Nevertheless, if you want to ask a provocative question regarding electrification, it should be: are plug-ins “stepping stones”?

Today, storing energy in liquid form is far superior to batteries, and it might be forever. Moreover, liquid fuels have the potential to drive autos just as efficiently as battery-powered cars. In fact, vehicle electrification is far from dependent upon just batteries.

Without doubt, battery electric cars are more developed today than futuristic liquid-fueled electrification offerings, such as fuel cells, but their lead isn’t nearly as big as hardcore plug-in advocates seem to believe. Moreover, the potential of liquid fuels is immense and becoming greater constantly, and that could be the key difference.

Today, for instance, the Toyota Prius is already more green the most grid-powered electric cars. Therefore, if plug-ins offer a key differentiator, its the use of less foreign oil. However, far greater Prius sales, for example, can still reduce US foreign oil dependence far more than plug-ins if sales are limited because of costs, range, etc.

Until costs decline significantly, plug-in vehicles will remain in the niches. That means while plug-ins are great personal foreign oil dependence fighters, they’ll offer little for US energy independence anytime soon.

Unfortunately, as they say, good intentions often pave the road to hell.

In fact, even hybrid cars offer little foreign oil dependence firepower anytime soon. And, until either hybrids and/or plug-ins dominate car sales, the legacy effect of decades of auto sales guarantees that oil dependence will be around for several decades.

But even the legacy effect doesn’t demand foreign oil dependence.

Today, for instance, biomass can be turned into numerous fuels, such as methanol, that can power 10 year old cars or fuel cell vehicles. In fact, biomass and cellulosic ethanol can power ICE, diesel, fuel cell and pure battery-powered vehicles. That means there are liquid fuels that can both fight the legacy effect while also powering the cars of the future, regardless of powertrain. Likewise, tap into natural gas, and methanol offers foreign-oil ending potential.

Additionally, convert biomass into a sugar slurry, pass it through the current fueling infrastructure, and it can power a fuel cell vehicle just as efficiently as turning biomass into electricity for a battery-powered electric plug-in, even more efficiently. More important, the same sugar slurry can also be converted into fuels for conventional vehicles — green, domestic fuels. That’s a legacy-fighting, fuel cell powering fuel that doesn’t require a hydrogen highway or a new supergrid.

And since the legacy effect might be the key to US energy independence, such liquid fuels might provide the key to a sunny future, literally.

While solar power continues to stumble over storage issues, artificial photosynthesis, for example, might create new domestic fuels that offer a far greener future than coal-powered electricity. Yet the future of the automobile could still be electric.

While fuel cell hybrid costs — which are powered by electricity — have declined drastically in recent years and new breakthroughs promise far greater reductions, the hydrogen highway has remained a critical problem. Breakthroughs in artificial photosynthesis, methanogenesis or numerous other chemical possibilities, however, could quickly resolve that problem, while also curing the legacy effect.

Of course, some new breakthrough might make batteries far cheaper and efficient than any liquid fuel, but the science proves such a battery-powered future is far from guaranteed. Therefore, betting the farm on such a future could be a devastatingly costly economic mistake, especially when batteries offer little legacy-fighting power.

Instead, more and more the science suggests that the future will probably be a mix of battery and liquids — a very hybrid future. Ultimately, today’s hybrids might be stepping stones…..to better hybrid vehicles.