After Gutenberg

Subtitle: Are you sure this is how Harrison Ford got his start?

Via calcars-news, Seattle Times Guest columnists Steve Marshall and Bruce Agnew give us a classic “American Graffiti” moment.

A Corvette had stopped at the light next to Martin Eberhard’s new Tesla Roadster. The Corvette driver wanted a race. Jim Woolsey, former CIA director in the Clinton administration, was at the wheel of the Tesla, taking a test drive. He asked Eberhard, Tesla Motors’ CEO, what to do, and got the answer he wanted. “Take him,” said Eberhard.

When the light turned green, Woolsey floored it. With a near-silent whoosh, the all-electric Tesla, capable of going from zero to 60 in four seconds, left the Corvette driver with one question when he caught up at the next light: “What is that?”

To add insult to injury, the proper response would be to respond airly, “Oh, it’s the Future. Where did you get that museum piece?”

People intuitively understand that you plug it in. No big deal. Marshall and Agnew also refer to a report earlier this year from the Brookings Institute:

“To reduce oil dependence, nothing would do more good more quickly than making cars that could connect to the electric grid.” Add an extension cord and the infrastructure is already in place for PHEVs. In most states there is significant unused generating capacity to recharge cars overnight. Electric utilities could become the gas stations of the future.

One of the items in the House version of a new energy bill is to offer incentives for plug-in hybrids. Green Car Congress reports on the component of the package for plug-ins and electric transportation:

• Establishes a loan guarantee program for the construction of advanced battery manufacturing facilities.
• Amends the language in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that provides manufacturing conversion grants for hybrid-electric vehicles to include plug-in hybrids and components.
• Establishes a program to provide grants on a cost-shared basis to State governments, local governments, metropolitan transportation authorities, air pollution control districts, private or nonprofit entities or combinations thereof, to carry out projects to encourage the use of plug-in electric drive vehicles or other emerging electric vehicle technologies.
• Provides incentives for federal and state fleets for medium- and heavy-duty hybrids.
• Amends the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to include a number of forms of electric drive vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, for the allocation of credits.

During the committee markup sessions, a number of amendments were added, including:

• Establishing a 5,000-vehicle PHEV conversion pilot program that would involve 5 cities with 1,000 conversions per city.
• Establishing a revolving loan program for qualified electric transportation projects, which includes ship-side or shore-side electrification; truck-stop electrification; electric truck refrigeration units; battery powered APUs for trucks; electric airport ground support equipment; electric or dual-mode electric freight rail; any distribution upgrades required to supply electricity to the projects; and any ancillary infrastructure.
• Authorizing grants to owners of electric drive transportation technology to use off-peak electricity or to have the load managed by the utility.
• Establishing a market assessment program for electric-drive transportation technologies.
• Establishing a program to determine how to integrate PHEVs into the transmission grid, to develop systems and processes to allow plug-ins to function as emergency back-up power sources for consumers.
• Ordering a study from the DOT, DOE and other agencies on the benefits of and barriers to the widespread use of city electric cars (higher speed than neighborhood electric vehicles, lower speed than passenger vehicles) and which may be battery electric, fuel-cell electric or plug-in hybrids.
• Specifically including hydraulic hybrids in the vehicle mix.

Marshall and Agnew opine that there is a chance that effective legislation could pass this year.

Federal and state governments are some of the biggest markets for vehicles, and their purchasing power can help jump-start PHEVs. King County Executive Ron Sims used Metro bus-buying power to start GM on a path to produce hybrid buses. Similarly, replacement vehicles for federal and state agency fleets could be the best way to kick off PHEV sales, providing a stable and reliable initial market that would start to drive costs down.

On Jan. 24, President Bush issued an executive order that requires federal agencies to purchase plug-in vehicles “when commercially available” and with comparable life-cycle costs to standard vehicles. But, the best way to ensure these vehicles are commercially available in the first place is to start with federal fleet orders, which will drive down costs. The Boeing 707 was launched with the first order from the federal government. Commercial sales soon took off and Boeing went on to dominate the jet age.

Another strategy is to define the life-cycle costs to include a concept that Jon Wellinghoff, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has called the “cash-back hybrid.” By intelligently connecting federal fleet vehicles when parked, plug-in hybrids can supply backup services, including voltage support and peak power, to the power system. The “cash-back” payments could help make PHEVs less expensive overall than standard vehicles.

Congress and the administration can put federal buying power into high gear to send the same signal as Metro bus hybrid orders sent to GM: Make these vehicles now; there are buyers for them.

The light just turned green, Congress.