Ford's Better Idea: EVs and Intelligent Charging

DEARBORN--Does everyone, at this point, understand what a plug-in hybrid is? Start with something like the Toyota Prius, and add a big second battery pack. Then add plug-in charging, so the car is capable of 30 to 40 miles of all-electric range. That way, if your commute is just 10 miles, you need never use gasoline, but the range -- up to 300 miles -- is there if you need it.

Toyota is building a plug-in version of the Prius. Saturn was building one, but then GM sold Saturn to Roger Penske, so two weeks ago the project was switched to Buick. But then, today, Buick bowed out (the vehicle was underpowered, apparently) and GM said yet another version is coming. Was that clear? The Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid, too.

In Michigan this week, Ford showcased its green fleet, and here's a video look at some of the unique cars:

The cars include an Escape-based plug-in hybrid, and also an "intelligent" in-car device that will allow it to interact with the grid. If everybody in a given neighborhood comes home at 6:30 p.m. and plugs in at the same time, the result is instant transformer overload. So the Ford system lets the customer dial in a recharge time, or choose a pricing system -- opting for low-cost off-peak power, for instance. It also gives another choice: Letting the grid itself decide when to charge the car (as long as it's ready to go in the morning).

"The easiest part of this is the hardware," said Bill Ford, the company's executive chairman. "The hard part is working with our utility partners on the infrastructure so that we can offer them seamless charging technology." He spoke of "ubiquity," meaning charge stations have to be everywhere and easy to use.

Ford's Nancy Gioia, director of sustainable technologies and hybrid vehicle programs, said the collaborations with utilities began with a visit to Southern California Edison in 2007, and has expanded to include 11 other utilities, the Department of Energy and others. She used PowerPoint to project a slogan that said something along the lines of, "Two industries tied together through a common fuel [electricity] to change the industry paradigm."

In one of the more sobering moments, Gioia said that charging a car is the equivalent of adding a house to the grid. So if you had a neighborhood of 10 houses and eight of them had cars plugged in, your community's load just jumped to 18. But utility representatives, from DTE Energy, Southern California Edison and Progress Energy, all made the prospect of adding the electric car to the grid look quite achievable. The added load isn't even equal to the challenge presented by central air conditioning, they said.

"We have excess energy off-peak," said Ed Kjaer of Southern California Edison. "Let's start sucking that up first." He added -- as did Ford -- that utilities are also looking at storage options, which means battery banks that can hold otherwise use-it-or-lose-it energy from renewable solar and wind generation. There's a zero-emission clean energy loop: Wind electricity goes into batteries, then into the grid when load is high to provide cruising power for zero-emission EVs.