Washington state WA has lots of cheap electricity from Hydro power, from Washington, Oregon, and Canada. There is extensive heavy electrical infrastructure in place.
Washington and Oregon have almost no currently developed natural gas production. There are a few pipelines from Canada that go through to California, but the newest pipelines from Canada go in the direction of Chicago. Also, the tar sands in Alberta use considerable NG for upgrading crude.
So if Washington and Oregon were to put 100,000 electric cars or plug in hybrids on the road, the electricity is availabel and only modest amount of additional infrastructure would be needed. That number could then go to 200k, 300k and more, easily.
The marginal cost of electricity is very low, and the incremental environment impact is very low also.
If they tried the same thing with natural gas powered cars, there would be a natural gas supply problem very quickly, and the price of NG would have to go up. New soucres would need to be found, (BC most likley) and new large pipelines built (figure about 5 years or more)
Natural gas is usually not very cheap in the North West, except occasionally, like after some large discoveries in Canada.
>>>So the operating cost of a natural gas power car are likely to be equal and possibly much higher than a gasoline powered car in the NW, while an electric car or plug in hybrid will tend to have a much lower operating cost. |
