OK, I’m ready. I want my electric car. I would rather not pay $4.00 a gallon for gasoline (I know, I’m a spoiled American), I would rather not continue to pour carbon dioxide from my tailpipe into the atmosphere, and I am a hopeless technophile and electric cars are just cool.

So I was interested to read that NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has created a prototype plug-in solar hybrid that gets 100 mpg. That is exactly what I want my next car to be because it seems that it where the technology is (or at least will be soon). I have been following this technology for a while, and while the tech media generally is heavy on the hype, it seems to me that we are genuinely getting close and this is a viable technology.

What NREL did was take a Prius – Toyota’s hybrid sedan – add a $40,000 lithium ion battery, add a $2,500 solar panel, and voila – 100 mpg. The resultant car costs $70,000, which is prohibitive to widespread adoption (and certainly to my personal adoption).

NREL makes the point that this is a single prototype. A mass-produced version would certainly be cheaper. But, the batteries and solar panels are somewhat fixed costs that will significantly raise the price of any similarly equipped car.

I also think the article skimmed over another point – the car isn’t really getting 100 miles per gallon – it’s getting 100 miles per gallon + the electricity charged from the grid to the battery. The solar panels likely contribute little to the overall charge in the battery (and this will vary wildly based upon geographic location, weather, time of day, and where you park). Most of the energy to drive the car comes from the grid. If you drive less than about 60 miles per day commuting, virtually all of the power will come from this source.

Don’t get me wrong – this is a good thing. This is what I want. At $4.00 per gallon, a 30 MPG car would cost 13.3 cents per mile to drive. A similar electric car would cost about 3 cents per mile – if charged from the grid off -peak. Add a solar panel and that decreases the cost a bit further. Also, electric cars have efficiency options, like regenerative breaking, that pure combustion engine cars do not.

The question remains, though, is the technology ready? The new lithium-ion batteries are able to store enough energy and provide enough power, but they are still very expensive. Also, there lifespan is as yet unknown. Will they survive the lifetime of the car, or will you have to spend thousands of dollars in 2-3 years to replace it?

What about the solar panels (which are admittedly an optional addition)? Will they pay for themselves over the lifetime of the car?

Better batteries and better options (like ultra-capacitors), at least we are told by the tech magazines, are on the horizon – but when will they manifest?

Charging off the grid off peak is a great idea in many ways. Power plants usually have untapped energy production capacity that go unused off-peak. They would love to better balance their production by increasing off-peak demand. Imagine millions of people recharging their cars overnight during off-peak hours. Therefore much of the increased use of electricity would not even require additional power plants – they would use the currently untapped production of existing power plants.

But eventually the increased use of electricity will require expanding our electrical power production.  The energy has to come from somewhere, and if we build more coal-burning plants (or simply increase the output of existing coal-burning plants) to charge our electric cars any imagined environmental benefit will be erased. Electric cars may shift our energy dependence partly from foreign oil to domestic coal, but I don’t think the environment cares about that.

As an aside – I am not necessarily talking about global warming. Pollution from coal-burning plants is a significant health hazard resulting in numerous excess deaths from asthma and related lung disorders.

Therefore any discussion of electric cars must be linked to thinking about our electricity infrastructure. I personally think solar and nuclear will be the best options, with other clean energy sources (like wind, hydroelectric, geothermal) playing lesser but important roles. We’ll see.

Meanwhile – I do want my plug-in solar electric car.