But, plug?

Here’s a piece from Cato fellow Jerry Taylor on the hype for plug-in hybrid cars:

Of course, if [plug-in hybrids] really were the wave of the future, there would be no need for ranting in Washington — automobile manufacturers would be busy making them as we speak. It’s only when corporate America is cool to an idea that the prophets turn to the taxpayer or the regulator. This illustrates Taylor’s law — “the commercial merit of any particular technology is inversely related to the degree of political tub-thumping heard in Washington for said technology.”

Here’s the issue I have with these proposed cars: just because they use less gasoline doesn’t mean they’re better, because their power still has to come from somewhere. “Plug-in” doesn’t mean its power miraculously appears from a wall-socket. It means that the electricity infrastructure has to deliver power to keep a car going. Given that we’ve received plenty of alarms about how The Grid is doomed to collapse as our electricity demands keep rising — and that a large portion of that electricity is generated by burning coal — I don’t get how plug-in cars are going to “solve our oil addiction” without creating even greater problems.