The high cost of fuel this past year did serious damage to our economy and society. After a brief reprieve gas prices are inching back up again. Our nation should not allow other nations to have such power over us and our economy . We have so much available to us in the way of technology and free sources of energy. WE seriously need to get on with becoming an energy independent nation. We are spending billions upon billions in bail out dollars. Why not spend some of those billions in getting alternative energy projects set up. We could create clean cheap energy, millions of badly needed new green jobs and lessen our dependence on foreign oil all in one fell swoop. I just read an eye opening book by Jeff Wilson called The Manhattan Project of 2009. It would cost the equivalent of 60 cents per gallon to drive and charge an electric car.If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trains, the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota. Why don't we use some of the billions in bail out money to bail us out of our dependence on foreign oil? This past year the high cost of fuel so seriously damaged our economy and society that the ripple effects will be felt for years to come.
www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com

BeyonGreen,

Thank you for the recommendation. I've just ordered a copy -- but I must confess I am a priori skeptical about its economics.

If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trains, the amount of electricity needed to replace gasoline is about equal to the estimated wind energy potential of the state of North Dakota.

Extravagant claims like this automatically set my bullshit detector ringing -- on the assumption that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. But I'll suspend judgment until I've read the book.

Perhaps there is a magic bullet after all ... :-)

If all gasoline cars, trucks, and SUV's instead had plug-in electric drive trains,

...we'd be in the land of flying pigs, because it would have taken an impossibly huge investment to achieve that changeover of so many machines, regardless of the economic climate in which such investment is all the harder. So the continuation of the sentence become irrelevant.

My experience of these sorts of official plans is that their worthy generalisations fail to be supported by compatible details (such as contraction of air transport). And in respect of energy projections, they cannot be allowed to admit that the sums are simply not going to add up.

All I hear is what a "savior" Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles will be. Does anybody say how much they will weight, because weight, and aerodynamics are the major determinants of their efficiency. It takes just a much Exergy to power a given car, independent of its power source. Exergy is what we have to stop wasting.

The AVE captures Exergy lost in unconstrained expansion (updrafts) in the the troposphere. See http://vortexengine.ca