Have plug-in hybrids finally reached the 'tipping point'?
What a week it was. Last Monday, Ford announced its massive restructuring effort, including the eventual lay-off of upwards of 30,000 employees and the closing of more than a dozen plants. But it also revealed the existence of a highly secret R&D effort called the Piquette project to develop a completely recyclable hybrid-electric vehicle.
On Tuesday the Plug-In Partnership held its first official press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. at which it called for a national effort to not only develop plug-in hybrids but to create the necessary pull for that market in the form of "soft orders" from cities, consumers and utilities for these vehicles. It rolled out some big political "guns" including Jim Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and Senator Orin Hatch, all of whom spoke in support of the concept. You'll find the MP3 audio from that event on EV World.
Then AFS Trinity, which has deliberately stayed well below the radar for the last half decade or more, issued its surprise press release stating that it had formed a strategic alliance with Ricardo, one of the world's leading automotive engineering firms, to develop not just a plug-in hybrid, but a "vehicle-to-grid" hybrid. You'll hear from AFS Trinity CEO Edward Furia personally about this move this week in an exclusive "Future In Motion" interview available only to EV World Premium subscribers.
About the time AFS Trinity was issuing its press release, Ford Motor Company debuted a modified Escape Hybrid research vehicle that can run on E-85 fuel, something many of us have been asking Ford to develop for many months now.
Interestingly, it was Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, who during the Plug-In Partners press conference called on the President to make development of flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrids a part of his State of the Union address tonight (Tuesday, January 31, 2006). However, given the White House's endorsement of hydrogen fuel cell technology and its "admit no errors" policy, it's highly doubtful this suggestion will be taken seriously. But as Edward Furia points out in our interview, the pressure is mounting politically and in the media from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times to The Economist for increased government and industry focus on this initiative.