How to cure an oil addiction? Electric cars are key
Published Monday, 12th December 2011
Boost domestic hydrocarbon production? Yes. Improve the fuel economy of cars on the road today? Yes again. But an even bigger key to curbing US hunger for imported oil lies with plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) … a whole lot more of them, according to the non-partisan advocacy group Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE).
Powering up cars with plugs instead of pumps is vital to breaking US dependence on oil, much of which comes from sources the nation would rather not support, says Robbie Diamond, SAFE’s president and CEO.
“With as much as 90 percent of global oil and gas reserves held by national oil companies — many of which are in countries that share neither our values nor our goals — the global oil market is not a free market,” Diamond said. “Electrification offers the opportunity to break the oil monopoly in the transportation sector.”
As early as it is for the US electric-car market, sales are already off to a better start than they were for hybrid vehicles, which became available a decade ago. Plug-in vehicle sales have passed the 15,000-mark in their first full year of availability, SAFE notes. By comparison, hybrid sales in the US totaled 9,350 in 2000, the first full year in which they were available.
The figures for electric cars should improve even more in the next few years, with more than 30 new models set to enter the market over the next two years, Diamond said. To keep the momentum in adoption going, he added, the US needs to make sure it provides strong support and policies for plug-in electric vehicles.
“It is essential to put the cost of supportive policies in context of the total cost of our oil dependence,” Diamond said. “Every technology experiences challenges, and electric vehicles are no different. But to stop, or even slow down support for an industry that has the potential to dramatically improve our economic and national security would only jeopardize the nation’s prosperity and security.”
SAFE cites a variety of statistics to support the importance of electric cars. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for example, have calculated that US oil dependence has done the nation more than $5 trillion in economic damage since the 1970s. The country’s military alone incurs an annual cost of between $67.5 billion and $83 billion from that dependence, according to the RAND Corporation. And the 2011 US trade deficit for crude oil and refined products will likely be around $300 billion.
“Plug-in electric vehicles are a strategic weapon to combat oil dependence,” Diamond said. “Electricity is generated from a diverse set of domestic energy sources — from nuclear and natural gas, to coal and renewables. Electricity prices are also more stable than oil prices, and there is an existing infrastructure with spare capacity already in place.”
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