Electric cars making inroads

They plug into standard electrical outlets, but that’s pretty much where everything standard ended for the hybrid plug-in vehicles that sat in front of the Marriott at Grand National Wednesday.
Southern Company had three of its vehicles on display Wednesday, including a Ford F550 electric bucket truck plug-in hybrid, a Ford Escape plug-in hybrid and fully electric Tesla Roadster at a Fleet manager’s meeting at the business retreat hotel.
The vehicles were on display as part of Southern Company's Fleet Manager's meeting at the Marriott at Grand National Wednesday. Area media were invited to check out the latest technology.
The plug-in hybrids and fully electric car are the result of collaborative efforts between groups like the Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Department of Energy, Southern Company, the Electric Power Research Institute and Johnson Controls Incorporated.
Seeing at one of these cars, such as the four-cylinder Ford Escape plug-in hybrid, may change your thinking about what a plug-in vehicle might look like.
“The vehicle’s 10-kilowatt hour, lithium ion battery takes about six to eight hours to fully charge and in blended mode (using combination of flexible fuel and electric battery power) can travel as much as 100 miles per gallon driving in city conditions at fairly low speeds,” said Southern Company research engineer Bryan C. Coley.
Coley says Ford hopes to have the Escape plug-in hybrid in production by late 2011.
The push toward developing efficient, electric vehicles isn’t confined strictly to passenger cars either, according to Tony Saxon, fleet materials supervisor for Georgia Power, who was operating a new electric bucket truck plug-in hybrid at Wednesday’s fleet manager’s meeting.
Like the Ford Escape plug-in hybrid, the electric bucket truck plug-in hybrid operates on a combination of fuel and electrical power when driven. However, once it is on a job site and stationary, its lift bucket is operated using its lithium ion batteries instead of its diesel engine as similar utility vehicles currently operate, according to Saxon.
“What we’re ultimately talking about is a reduction in fuel consumption, dependency on foreign oil, emissions and noise pollution,” said Saxon, who added that the electric bucket truck plug-in hybrid can operate for up to three hours on electric power alone using its fully charged lithium ion batteries.
Over the next year or so, the plug-in hybrids will be monitored by Southern Company personnel for data, such as their charging patterns, as well as what the demand for generation of additional electricity might look like on a larger scale when plug-in hybrids hopefully penetrate a larger portion of the auto consumer market, Coley said.
“We want to make vehicles like this a win-win situation for everyone and we think these types of vehicles will be very positive for the future,” Coley said.