An excellent interim solution, at least for the next 10+ years or until affordable 500+ miles BEVs become available.

The next step is for HEVs and PHEVs to become enough of the market that the body design is changed to put the battery in the floor pan, a la the Tesla Model S.

EP:
Bumps to hold the battery are pretty much an American company thing.
Those that are coming or on the road and don't include the Fit EV, Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the Renault Zoe, VW UpE, VW Golf plug in hybrid and anything else the VW group decide to do as all of their chassis have been redesigned to enable a variety of drive trains.

What happened to my first post?

MPGe is a fraudulent measure of vehicle efficiency. It assumes that electrical energy comes into existence by immaculate conception. Please do nut be lulled into a false sense of green accomplishment by these impressive-looking but completely meaningless MPGe numbers.

In reality, a large fraction (>60%) of the US electric grid-mix is generated from fossile fuels (coal and natgas), and MPGe does not account for any of the CO2 emitted nor energy lost in generation (huge losses) and distribution (around 7%).

Coal-fired electricity has an energy efficiency of around 33%, which means that a car that is rated 100MPGe in reality only gets the equivalent of 33MPG in terms of energy and CO2 usage when run on coal-fired electricity. With average grid mix (not just coal-fired), a 100MPGe plugin car gets maybe 50MPG in real life. This is no better than a Prius.

Poetic justice for Ford for their early disdain for EVs.

GM forged ahead initially with the EV1, then fell by the wayside.

Toyota stayed the course with the Prius family.

Now the Ford C-MAX comes late to the game and becomes the fastest-selling hybrid ever at launch.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every purpose under heaven:

- a time to be green and a time to wait.

Never debate with fools nor idiots, it is really futile to debate with foolish idiots.

SJC, thanks for the referral to the UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists).

They have a pretty decent white-paper at

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-report.pdf

The paper does cover the concept of MPGghg (greenhousegas), and also talks about MPGe, but they have not been good at explaining the fraud of MPGe. UCS also sticks their head a bit in the sand when they look at CO2/kWh and pretend that it depends on which state/region you live in. They have not quite understood that the grid is near fully interconnected and that electron are fungible.

But they (UCS) are better than most.

Bob, natural gas is fossil fuel. It is a lit cleaner than coal.

PiP is the cleanest PHEV, per EPA beyond tailpipe emission site. It is the only plugin hybrid with a flat cargo floor and 5 seats.

I have it for about two months and I have been averaging 264 Wh/mi (128 MPGe) on electric miles (charging loss included) and 55 MPG on gas miles.

It is amazingly efficient and I am thrilled with getting those numbers in a midsize.

Of course energy efficiency is an important metric, but it is not the only one.

I ran some numbers recently to take a look at the meme that battery electric cars are constantly said to be 2-3 times as efficient as fuel cell cars.

Using present production techniques and the transmission efficiency of the US grid and power production, fuel cells actually work out at around as efficient per mile as battery cars.

Once the figures are looked at in more detail however, then for instance nuclear runs at around 32% efficient and then has a 7% transmission loss.

Coal is more efficient, and advanced turbines could make it more so.

But one is tempted to ask: 'So what?'
Clearly whatever one thinks about nuclear power, if you are running a plant at all then the additional pollution per MW is tiny, whereas every MW of coal comes at large environmental cost.

Solar is only around 15% efficient, but again: 'So what?'

Energy efficiency figures are important, but should not be seen in isolation.
If that was the only metric, then we would all be riding bicycles instead of driving.

The trick is to attain good standards of comfort and convenience whilst keeping damage from energy production within reasonable bounds.

Re: coal's drawbacks--don't forget that coal plants don't just despoil the land and air, they have huge effects on human health. People freak out about the overblown risks of radiation from nuclear power, while coal plants kill thousands of people year after year.

How can you turn a decent 5 passenger family car into a $40k Detroit rip off?

“Advanced lithium-ion batteries covered by an eight-year/100,000-mile component limited warranty. ”

For the price of two new cars, you get batteries in one car.

Most advocates of hauling batteries around do not have a clue where the power comes from but it is pretty simple. Find out what power plant is supplying power for load following when you plug in to the battery charger. It is almost always a fossil plant. For a few weeks in the spring in the PNW, wind and hydroelectric can supply the very low demand.

“Coal-fired electricity has an energy efficiency of around 33% ...”

Many coal plants are much more efficient but the very efficient coal plants are based loaded first leaving the more inefficient plants to load follow.

“first half of the year we got 36% of our electricity from coal and 32% from renewables and nuclear. I suspect by the end of 2013 non-carbon generation will have surpassed coal.”

I always love when predictions are made by those who do not understand the basics (aka clueless).

So what would need to happen for BS Bob predictions to happen. First nuclear would have to get back to where they were the year before. BS Bob has argued nuclear is dead. Then hydroelectric would have to get back to the year before. Next we would need to double wind production. Without a PTC, we may not see a 1% increase let alone 100%. Next the price of NG would have to decrease from rock bottom to paying power companies to burn NG. Also the economy has to say depressed and the weather mild.

“What matters is what generates unwelcome changes in the environment. ”

What matters is that energy is delivered when and where it is needed. Watch how pragmatic people come when there is a shortage.

“Hundreds of thousands at least, more likely millions. ”

Not in the US! The air quality in the US is better than the threshold of harm. That means no one is being hurt by emissions from cars, trucks, buses, factories, and power plants. I have read all the EPA references and there is no 'smoking gun'. There is a claim of premature death associated with air pollutions but it is very weak on the data side. Association is not causation!

If I was to tell you that a person over 75 who smoked all their life and had severe chronic heart disease died of heart failure what would you think is the cause? The obvious answer is not air pollution so why are researchers looking a weak statistics?

It is true that millions die every year but mostly from old age or a destructive life style.