PHEV Industry Quotes

James Woolsey, VP President of Booz Allen Hamilton and Commissioner on the National Commission on Energy Policy as well as the Former Director of the U.S. Intelligence Agency - "Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins" by James Woolsey as posted on Grist.org - January 2007

• "Utilities are rapidly becoming quite interested in plug-ins because of the substantial benefit to them of being able to sell off-peak power at night. Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity, DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. Further, those plug-ins that are left connected to an electrical socket after being fully charged (most U.S. cars are parked over 20 hours a day) can substitute for expensive natural gas by providing electricity from their batteries back to the grid: "spinning" reserves to help deal with power outages and regulation of the grid's voltage and amperage."

  "As for cars, we [the Energy Future Coalition] are advocating modern diesels, flexible-fuel vehicles, hybrids, and a plug-in adaptation for hybrids.Plug-in hybrids would be a simple adaptation of existing hybrid technology by adding a battery that can recharge from the grid. You'd charge your hybrid at night and drive about 10 to 30 miles on the overnight power before you start using liquid gas, which means your 50-mpg Prius now becomes a 100- to 150-mpg Prius. Based on current electricity prices, you would get the functional equivalent of 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline."

Ray Gogel, Chief Administrative Officer, Xcel Energy - "Xcel/NREL study: With a smart grid, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could have system benefits" - NREL press release - February 2007

• "Successfully managing a charging program will depend on a smart utility grid...Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles have the potential to help us better use renewable and other nontraditional energy sources while creating a grid that is more interconnected, balanced and reliable."

Peter Darbee, Chairman, CEO and President, PG&E Corporation - Speech at National Press Club - January 2007

• "More efficient cars have the obvious benefit of reducing oil use. But this technology (PHEVs) could also help the power grid. When the cars are not in use, energy from the batteries could be uploaded back to the system, reducing the need for peak power generation. This is important, because peak power often comes from the least efficient and least clean resources on the grid."

Alan Richardson, President & CEO, American Public Power Association - Plug-In-Partners Press Conference - January 2006

• "...the case for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can be boiled down into short-hand that people understand: energy security, vulnerability to foreign sources of oil, greenhouse gas emissions, the environment, economic security. People understand those arguments almost intuitively, and when you say there is one answer that addresses each of these issues and it's plug-in hybrid electric vehicles...they get it."

Joseph Romm, Center for Energy & Climate Solutions - Plug-In-Partners Press Conference - January 2006

• "Plug-in hybrids running on electricity will reduce urban air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide 90% or more compared to the average new car running on gasoline. And even better, none of the pollutants are emitted from the tailpipe -- so they don't aggravate urban smog."

Dan Delurey, Executive Director, Demand Response and Advanced Metering Coalition (DRAM) - Testimony to Senate Finance Committee - Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Subcommittee - May 2007

• "Even automobiles are developing into a dynamic storage media in the case of the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), where the replacement of petroleum with electricity has been shown to have net environmental benefits as well as help optimize grid management."

Felix Kramer, Founder, CalCars - The Clean Tech Revolution - June 2007

• "PHEVs and EVs are the only cars that get cleaner as they get older because the grid gets cleaner every decade."