Rolling blackouts are generally during the day. There’s a lot of untapped capacity at night, where plants that are too expensive to operate on a lower duty cycle waste huge amounts of generated energy.Tthere are various energy storage systems that are about 30% efficient (giant flymills, hydro tank-level storage, monster battery packs). 30% is better than 0%, but better yet to recharge vehicles during that time.

Smart grids will help manage this load more efficiently and more safely. Yes, there will be some grid issues, but they’re not a huge problem.

If coal is burned in dirty powerplants, it’s on a similar level of pollution as a low-polluting internal combustion engine. If it’s burned in clean powerplants, it’s much less so. You’re comparing a best-case scenario for ICE (prius) with the worst-case scenario (or the most common current scenario for EV. Properly cleaned up, coal is reasonably low pollution, still low energy cost, and the US has a couple hundred years of power reserves at current rates in coal ON OUR OWN soil.

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/shift-sorry-cri.php

In 10 years, when EVs are becoming .. if not common, then not unusual? The dirty coal plants will be low-hanging fruit to clean up. You can’t clean up the millions of ICE-powered vehicles roaming the cities and suburbs in a similar fashion (and they’ll be with us for a long time yet).

And in the long-term, any EV on the road can use advances in clean power, or be powered from a renewable source.

I agree with most of your other points. Start / stop systems, HCCI gas engines, small turbo-diesels, lighter commute vehicles are all good things if they can be brought to market at a competitive pricepoint. Additional mass-transit development would be delightful, regardless of whether it’s CNG, ICE, turbodiesel, or electric. Europe has a big advantage over many parts of the US due to population density – mass transit works only in dense populations.

A note on diesel: from what little I understand, the proportions of gas : diesel produced are fairly fixed per plant and not easy to change. Diesel is lower production than gas and therefore more subject to swings in demand (mostly based around the amount of freight being moved).

L/100km (or ga / 100mi) is a huge conceptual improvement over mpg. 16 mpg vs 20 mpg sounds better than 6.7 ga/100mi vs 5 ga/100 mi. It also underscores the ridiculousness of improving from 50 mpg to 100 or 200 mpg .. 2 ga/100 mi down to 1 or 0.5 ga / 100mi is less of an improvement than the 2mode hybrid vs mdx improvement listed above.

Absolutely, address other sources of pollution.