Many carmakers are busy trying to present plug-ins, and already has made lots of us interested...but it seems a bit shady whether we would be able to see for sure, such cars gracing our cities.
President Bush, who has been patiently advocating such vehicles for a year now tells National Association of Manufacturers:
We’re working on battery technologies. They say we’re pretty close to a breakthrough in a battery where you can drive the first 40 miles on a battery, and your car doesn’t look like a golf cart.
Dennis Cuneo, Toyota Senior Vice President also shared in a speech this week that plug-in hybrids may come sooner than the company previously anticipated, that the company was optimistic that the battery technology needed was closer to being viable than previously thought.
Lovely, I truly hope that happens, however, there is a huge... BUT! Experts and auto manufacturers say this dream is still distant, and no vehicle on the market can go 40 miles on battery power alone.
‘The battery technology to achieve the goals (of a plug-in) is several years away’ Dave Hermance, Toyota’s executive engineer for advanced vehicle technology, said in May.
Michael Duoba, research engineer at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, said the first move is getting lithium ion batteries to be cheaper. The question is-will it last or will it get cheaper?
Carmaker’s plug-in hybrid attempts:
DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group is the only domestic manufacturer that has a test plug-in hybrid, Dodge Sprinter on the road. In May, Ford Motor Co. was also approached by California Cars Initiative on this issue. However, as we all know-Ford backed out a hybrids for other fuel-efficient cars.
On Thursday, Bush also shared his dream:
One of these days our children will be driving cars powered by hydrogen. In other words, in order to make sure this country is competitive, we’ve got to be spending money on technology now, on research and development now, to change our habits.
Sorry, I do not see the plug-in hybrid picture as clear as Mr. Bush and Dennis Cuneo do. If their predictions do come true, I would still wonder about the credibility of those cars. As much as I hate admitting, I believe our technology is still excessively behind in this area. However, let us hope for the very best.
