The Hybrid Energy Economy

September 10, 2008

This is a screen shot of the energy monitor from my Toyota Prius. It also may foreshadow the solution to our current energy and environmental crisis.

A car equipped only with a conventional combustion engine is a fundamentally unintelligent piece of technology. It is estimated by the Rocky Mountain Institute that only 2% of the energy expended is actually used to propel the passenger. The other 98% moves the massive weight of the vehicle, runs the engine and holds the brakes when the car is stopped, or emanates out into the environment as waste heat.

According to testimony Mark Mills gave before the US Senate earlier this summer, not only is the development of affordable hybrid cars an important step towards improving the efficiency of the transportation sector, but their continuing market penetration foreshadows our future energy economy.  A future full of stages of transformation, and a future full of automation. 

In Mills's words, "conventional cars waste gasoline in stop-and-go, coasting, running unnecessarily at stops and generally operating an engine sub optimally." Hybrids automate basic energy saving strategies.  They layer "the stuff of the digital economy" on top of the steel and grease, and they do much more gracefully and consistently the things we all could do manually to save energy.

Hybrid technologies don't change the basic tools; they make the tools smarter.  They maintain the framework of the car.  They use the existing infrastructure.  And they make it work more productively, step by step by step.  Again, according to Mills:

The Toyota Prius is only the beginning, and that, to me, is hugely exciting.

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