Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ah, an explanation for the electric car question...

This article in Salon:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/22/plug_in_hybrids/index.html

...explains the difference between a regular hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and an all-electric. I guess, not having paid too much attention to hybrids (I'd love one, but when you're on a used-car-only budget, you don't get that option), I had assumed they already -were- plug-ins. Which was why the previous article confused me so much.

The one argument I have with the article - the writer says that a 40-mile-per-day capacity really isn't needed; most people drive less than that. Do I really commute that much farther than the average person? My drive is somewhere between 17 - 20 miles one way. So I easily do more than 40 miles a day, especially once you add a grocery store trip, or picking a kid up from school or a friend's house, or any of the other million errands that seem to come up every week...

1 comment:

Eric Fischer said...

The most recent statistic I can find is from 2001, when the average national distance to work was 12.1 miles, up from 9 miles in 1975.

(http://nhts.ornl.gov/2001/pub/STT.pdf)

I'm even more of an outlier, with a ridiculous 37 miles to go each way. I miss the days when I lived a mile from work and walked there.