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Technology Stocks : The Electric Car, or MPG "what me worry?" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gg cox who wrote (208)	3/28/2008 5:21:17 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 17369

<<Electric utilities are running their own tests on the vehicles. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. demonstrated last year how plug-ins can act as batteries for houses, feeding power back into a home electrical system.>> When would this take place??Not at night because they are being charged. Well maybe if your power goes out it would be useful. Not that the car is likely to be the most efficient or cheapest source of energy in the world but at that point you probably don't care that much about burning a little gasoline. Still it doesn't exactly strike me as a major plus. Most of the time you would not use the feature, and when you do use it you probably have to really minimize how much electricity you use.

To: gg cox who wrote (208)	3/28/2008 8:18:29 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17369

Well the "controller" in your car wouldn't allow that to happen. Once an EV is configured to work both ways (invert to put power on the grid or to be charged) it would be done by command of your programming instructions in the car or your home or even your cell phone as an example. One little microprocessor and some code would make your car "smart" and that would serve to instruct the utility what your car is capable of when it is interfaced to the utility. Distributed storage in this sense is a huge advantage to a utility. Considering that your car is not moving the vast majority of the time during the day this battery can be available to smooth out the grid. If you don't want to plug in at work, no problem. It's up to you to decide. Some of us envision just simply plugging in and the utility immediately "handshakes" with the car. This is not rocket science and could be done today as the utility does send signals down their existing grid piggy back on the power lines. A number of folks are working on this at the present time. Distributed neighborhood grids would become very reliable and stable. As more homes generate their own electrons in the future you can just imagine the possibilities!