GM is planning on producing the Chevy Volt in late 2010 (if they can stay in business until then).  The car is a electric/gas hybrid, but will come with a household plug to be able to charge the battery.  By charging the battery, you are supposed to achieve up to 40 miles before the gas motor engages to charge the batteries to power the vehicle.  The thought is that many people will travel less than 40 miles per day, thus allowing for zero gas usage.

For more information see:

http://wot.motortrend.com/ 6285981/green/volt-watch-gm-gives-details-on-plug-in-hybrids-battery

There are some interesting posts in the comments on that page.  Some try to calculate the cost of 40 miles, which if the battery is dead, it would take about 16 KWH (in my area about $0.09 per KWH or $1.44 for a full charge).  There are people who battle saying that it is not enough of a savings to justify the price vehicle (I doubt the price remains that high after the first year or so) and others argue about the issues that it is still pulling power plants that can be fossil fuels.  Many seem to miss the point.

The point of having a vehicle that will use primarily electricity or hydrogen (which we all know is easily created with electricity) is not price, nor directly saving the world from fossil fuels, but it is moving the transportation industry to a form of energy that can be derived from many different sources. 

Think about this, what if tomorrow we came up with a way to generate massive amounts of electricity at little cost.  How would that change the transportation industry or our use of fossil fuels?  Very little since most vehicles on the roads consume fossil fuels and can run on nothing else and you cannot generate fossil fuels from electricity.  This is the hook keeping use bound to fossil fuels. 

If all the vehicles move to some form of electricity drive, then we can use power from many different technologies which include green sources.  If new forms of generation come along, it is only a flip of the switch and everyone is using that new power without any changes.  As it is, we are bound to fossil fuels.

For an example, we know that diesel can be used to cause less pollution, but it does not matter as most vehicles on the road today cannot use diesel, but it could be used for power generation and pump that power out to electric vehicles.

Another aspect to electric or hydrogen based power is that we can control the consumption of fossil fuels to the power plants which should be much more energy efficient than the motors in all those vehicles on the road.  We could get a lot more bang for the barrel than pumping into vehicles.

Add on to this the reduction or at least control of pollution.  Large metro areas could have zero emissions from transportation.  Finally, clean air in big cities!  The pollution would be controlled in the area of the power plant and emission standards could be in place to massively reduce pollution generated by transportation.

There is also the advantage of simply buying a few solar panels or a wind generator and using them to augment your power consumption.  Some who are already off the grid can plug in and go!

While the Chevy Volt is only the first step in a considerable latter, it is at least a step.  I personally feel that the auto industry should have been required to have at least 50% of their production line, electric/hydrogen and move us into the future now.  Surely the “world” market for these kinds of vehicles could jump our auto industry to the lead once again!

I like one of the comments that maybe the should drop the gas motor and just double the battery size, an 80 mile commuter vehicle could be a big bread winner!