Welcome to PHEV Friday!
I can’t honestly say I’m going to be talking about Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles every Friday. I just though it was a catchy title. I do want to review them with you though because they’re a simple option for people who want the low emissions of an electric car without the (current) distance limitations.
As I said earlier, PHEV stands for what? Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. Why? Because all of the PHEVs today started out as regular ole’ hybrids, like the Prius or Escape. In fact, most are Priuses or Escapes. Honda’s hybrid system makes conversions more difficult, but there are a few out there (getting tremendous gas mileage, btw).
An additional benefit to PHEVs (pronounced “fev” and yes, I did have to ask, and it was such a pathetic question that nobody answered, but I did find out eventually) is that they fill up at night while most energy demands are low, and can theoretically feed energy back into the grid during times of greater use. They do raise a lot of interesting issues though, and hopefully we can get into them here.
There’s a ton of information online about PHEVs, including an initiative by Google.org to get more on the road, and several organizations set up to promote development of conversion kits or just to share the joys of driving electric with the world. I could list all of them for you, but that doesn’t give you much incentive to visit any of the sites, really, so please just go to the sites I’m going to be covering in related posts, and I’ll try to link to them here. Okay? Good.
If you come by in the future and want to check out the latest on plug-ins, feel free to click either PHEV or Plug-in at the menu on the right side of the screen. People tend to use the terms interchangeably. Hey, you might even check back next Friday to see if we’re talking about plug-ins again … but I’m not promising anything. ;)
Tags: 100+, converting car to electric, electric, fuel-efficient, hybrid, PHEV, plug-in
2 opinions for Welcome to PHEV Friday!
Garth
Jun 1, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Sorry, but according to the article cited for the pronunciation of “PHEV”, that pronounciation is supposed to be in vogue in 2060, not 2008. I think the idea of the author was that PHEVs are so common by then that a shortened form of the acronym came into use.
For now, I think we’ll have to stick with saying each letter of the acronym, or nobody will know what we are talking about.
Hilary
Jun 1, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Hmm, I guess you have to do what you feel comfortable with, Garth. Thanks for stopping. ;)
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