Even better, auto stop/start systems should be made mandatory on all vehicles. People are idiots and lazy in general. Until you make it mandatory, you'll never get mass compliance. Especially because manually turning the car off/on requires a lot of attention to do it without adding delay.

I can't tell you how many douche-bags I see sitting in their cars while parked with the engine running, poking at their phone on a nice day when they could turn the car off and enjoy the breeze instead of adding air pollution. Yeah - even with gas over $4/gallon around here and the typical car burning at least $2/worth every hour.

Increased electrification of the fleet (auto start/stop is a step in this direction as it requires beefier starter and battery to handle the additional starts) will result along with other fuel economy benefits.

Global warming concerns aside, particulate matter, especially fine particulate matter is known to aggravate respiratory issues in humans causing deaths and hospitalizations.

Moving high concentrations of these pollutants away from population centers through electrification will improve the health of people living near roads.

Yes - power plants should have improved scrubbers installed as well to reduce their particulate emissions as well.

That number is useless unless you also define the amount of time as well.

For example - On one acre one can install about 750 kW worth of solar on an acre. The US ranges from about 5-8 kWh of sun a day depending on where you live, so that 750 kW solar farm will produce anywhere from 3.7 MWh to 6 MWh a day. That's about enough for 100-200 households depending on the house. It's also good for about 11,000 - 18,000 electric vehicle miles / day assuming your EV uses 1 kWh to go 3 miles.

How does biofuel from algae compare to that?

You are mixing up refined petroleum products and crude oil. As you can see by our net exports of refined products, we currently have excess refinery capacity.

We consume about 20 million barrels of crude oil a day in the USA. About half of that is imported (~9M barrels/day in Sept 2011). The top 5 countries we import oil from are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria in that order which account for about 70% of our oil imports.

ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

The ~60 million barrels of petroleum products we exported the first 9 months of 2011 represent about a weeks worth of oil imports. Not even close to being a net exporter of oil.

Huh? 1 kW is 1.36 HP. So 350 kWh would be 476 HPh.

This is besides the point, but it depends on the size and aerodynamics of the car, but 60 HP will get you right around 100 mph.

No, the power required to travel 50 mph is a fraction of the power required to travel 50 mph thanks to the exponential effects of aerodynamic drag. If we assume 60 HP to travel 100 mph, it takes less than 15 HP to travel 50 mph.

Let's assume it takes 15 HP or 11 kW to maintain 50 mph and you want to drive 1000 miles.

That will take 20 hours and use 220 kWh (20h * 11kW) over that period of time.

To drive your typical car 1000 miles you need about 250-350 kWh. Which is anywhere from one half to one quarter your typical household's monthly usage.

Never mind that 98% of the time you will charge your EV at night or whenever there is excess generation capacity because the utility company will happily charge you lower rates to do so. A very large portion of our vehicle fleet could be electrified without adding any additional generation capacity.

When on average about 2/3rds of the energy we use is thrown away as waste heat before we can actually use it (never mind that ultimately ALL energy we use ends up as heat), there's plenty of room for reductions in energy use through efficiency.

What does refining capacity have to do with energy independence?

Never mind that refineries are shutting down because of low utilization rates and cut-throat competition (IE big refineries buying out small refineries and shutting them down to raise profits). A significant portion of our refining capacity is currently used to export finished oil products.

There isn't anywhere close to enough oil in the USA that can be pulled out of the ground fast enough to satisfy our oil demands (oil is the biggest contributor to energy dependence on foreign countries).

The only way to achieve energy dependence is to cut oil demand in half through a combination of efficiency and moving oil powered transport onto other fuels through electrification of the motor vehicle fleet where it makes sense.

At which point we'll have an even bigger surplus of refining capacity.

Implying that SSDs are equal because they use the same controller is like saying a Apple iMac and a Dell are the same because they use the same CPU.

The firmware that runs on the SSD is highly unlikely to be the same on Intel branded drives compared to OCZ branded drives. And firmware is what is a leading cause of reliability issues on SSDs.

I don't believe that Coda has received any federal money.

You are correct. Nissan got a DOE grant to build a large battery manufacturing plant there in Tennessee. The 2013 LEAF will be produced there and will have a very high domestic content label. Probably not as good as the Camry which has had the highest domestic content for a number of years. But it will be a lot better than the basically 100% foreign LEAF now. It will probably be better than the Chevy Volt which gets it's batteries from Korea.

I'd wager that the LEAF will be the most "American" EV on the market for model year 2013 unless a domestic manufacturer builds an EV using A123 batteries (GM may be closest to doing this, I think).

Just how long is your commute and poorly timed are your traffic lights that you can cut 5 min/day from your commute by stomping the gas?

Unless on the freeway, I find that the majority of the time I catch up to the guy "stomping the gas" at the next light because he's had to stomp the brakes at the next red light.

And are you really finding that 5 minutes noticable?

Personally, I find that many people turn into arrogant, self-serving, aggressive douche-bags when behind the wheel of a 2-ton automobile. And they'll use any excuse to blame that behavior on something else when driving aggressively is clearly linked to increased accident risk. (and yes, scientific studies back this up)

Unless you can charge at work, there aren't any EVs on the market I would suggest for 70 miles of freeway driving. The LEAF is EPA rated at 73 miles / charge which would be cutting it a bit close unless you limit speed on the freeway. Charging at work would make this a non-issue.

The Volt will be available with AT-PZEV compliance soon (current models don't qualify) that will get you into the carpool line and should get you about half your daily commute on electricity and about 40 mpg on the other half.

The Plug-in Prius will also be shipping soon and will be eligible for the carpool stickers. This has 15 mi EV range (though is limited in EV power so acts like a regular Prius on steroids at high speeds and high load demands) and gets basically the same fuel economy as a regular Prius after that.

Both the Volt and Prius plug-in will benefit if you can charge at work, too - the Volt has a chance of making nearly your whole trip on electrons if you do so.

The only other EV coming soon that would have sufficient range for reliable 70mi / day freeway commuting is the Tesla Model S - but that will cost you quite a bit of money.

Disclaimer: I own a Nissan LEAF and a Prius

The updated EPA numbers (which are supposed to be more realistic) for the 2004-2009 Prius is 46 mpg. I would hardly consider 0.7 mpg (or 1.5%) significant.

FWIW - my 2008 Prius gets similar fuel economy - 45-46 mpg on average as measured from the gas pump and odometer readings.

Interesting, I typically do slightly better than EPA on the highway rating of 45 mpg unless there is a strong head or cross wind or pushing speeds over 75 mph. Typically pure city driving is worse than the EPA rating of 48 mpg where I typically get low 40s mpg. I blame the poorly timed lights and high surface street speed limits (45-55mpg) around here - regenerative braking can only do so much!

No, most of the gasoline cost is in the cost of crude with about 15% of the cost coming from taxes (in the USA)

No, the grid is much more efficient than you think. Only about 6.5% of the electricity generated at central plants is lost on the way to your plug. Quite amazing, really! I understand that pumping gas along pipelines might only lose a couple percent of energy along the way, but small gas turbines are definitely NOT the way to go.

A typical small gas turbine will only be about 30% efficient. Modern large combined cycle gas turbine plants are over 60% efficient. Do the math and it's pretty easy to see what's more efficient.

Better than small gas turbines are fuel cells - you can buy a 5 kW unit around 40-50% efficient today, but it's not cheap. And they don't like to quickly change production levels like a turbine can.