In closing I would like each reader to take another look at the last graph and consider a broader ethical issue that we all need deal with. The resources required for micro, mild and full hybrid technologies ramp up gradually as fuel savings climb from 10% to 40%. The incremental resources required for that last 20% in fuel savings one gets by upgrading from a full hybrid to a PHEV are immense. In effect, to save 100 gallons of gas per year by upgrading a single full hybrid to a PHEV, we will have to forego using those batteries to build four additional full hybrids that could have collectively saved 800 gallons of gas per year. This is one of the most appalling examples of selfish and wasteful arrogance I can imagine. It has no place in a resource constrained world where 6 billion people have come to understand how the other 500 million live and the primary challenge for our species is finding relevant scale solutions to persistent shortages of water, food, energy and virtually every commodity you can imagine.

To me, the most appalling example of selfish and wasteful arrogance is to continue this fantasy that we can just keep on driving automobiles as if there were no other consequences beyond the quality of air and availability of fuel issues.

What about the traffic congestion that's reaching a terminal state in many cities? Do we just keep building more roads? How many cars, electric or otherwise, can our present infrastructure support before our cities end up looking like Bangkok? [example:. When my brother first started working in BK in 92 he was making 4 visits a day to customers. At the end of 98, he was making only one - the rest of his time was spent sitting in traffic going exactly nowhere.]

You can expand an 8 lane expressway to 16, 24, even 36 lanes, but you're still going nowhere if you can't get the traffic ON and especially OFF that expressway. This is the lesson of Los Angeles. There simply isn't enough space at the terminus, so your expressway just becomes a very expensive parking lot.

There are other considerations besides the consumption of already scarce resources that continued use of automobiles implies. First, who can afford to drive these things? The price is clearly not coming down anytime soon, so what? Are wages going to rise? Will related taxes be dropped or reduced? How much of our already stretched personal budget will go towards maintaining our dependency before we're finally forced to take the bus?

I honestly have to laugh. All this concern about putting carbon into the atmosphere. Has anyone stopped to thing how much carbon all those automobile tires are putting into the soil and water? I'm not talking about tire disposal, which is a whole other issue. I mean the normal daily wear of millions of tires putting fine carbon particulate into the environment. What's the solution there? Hover cars?

It's unsustainable. End of story. The sooner we realize that the better off we (and our children) will be. I'm not holding my breath though. People have an amazing propensity to cling to things that no longer work, and there's no better example of that than the automobile. Even the Chinese, who ought to know better, are gearing up for an automotive future. My god, what are they thinking?

There's a simple formula that applies to all major technologies:

They, 1) begin as a novelty 2) are adopted as a convenience 3) evolve into a necessity, and 4) eventually become an obstacle. That's the cycle and there's no escaping it. We've now reached stage 4 with the automobile. Time to look for a better solution.

ebear