Breaking That Dirty Old Habit

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Toyota isn't exactly jumping on the bandwagon. "Customers," says Ed LaRocque, Toyota's national manager of advanced technology, "are not telling us plug-in hybrids are something they'd like to see at no cost, let alone what we estimate would be an additional $15,000." Other car companies, including Ford and General Motors, seem to feel the same way. But DaimlerChrysler sees the field differently. It has spent millions to modify a handful of gas and diesel-powered Mercedes Sprinter vans into plug-ins, which will be tested as early as this fall by commercial partners in the U.S., such as utilities. Chrysler says the vans can run 20 miles on batteries charged both via the socket and, like the Prius, by braking. Cost will matter, says Rolf Bartke, head of the Mercedes-Benz van division. "In the end it should be viable and economic for our customers." Bartke says the aim is to bring the battery cost down below $10,000 within four years.

Several U.S. utilities are supporting the technology. Plug-in cars would open a new market for electricity at night, when utilities have excess capacity. In fact, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., helped build the plug-in Sprinter. Ed Kjaer, director of electric transportation at Southern California Edison, argues that plug-ins represent a natural evolution of hybrid technology, which today essentially burns gas to generate electricity. "The more hybrids are sold," he says, "the stronger the business case will become for the electric vehicle."

ETHANOL DREAMS

DAVID WIMPY, 49, CULTIVATES 800 ACRES OF CORN AND OTHER crops in Kentucky's hilly Amish country. As a member of the 2,300-strong Hopkinsville Elevator Cooperative, he is also part owner of the hottest new thing to hit town, Commonwealth Agri-Energy, an ethanol plant that started up a year ago in a stream-fed rock quarry a mile south of his land. The cooperative has a 94% stake in the $32 million plant, which has made an estimated $40 million in sales over the past year from ethanol and its by-products. Plant manager Mick Henderson says he expects that investors will get returns better than 13%. "Ethanol is a win-win for consumers, farmers and for the country," says Wimpy.

If electricity provides half of the 500-m.p.g. dream, ethanol provides the other: an alternative to gas. Hopkinsville's ethanol experience is hardly unique. Since 2001, 26 plants have been built in the U.S., bringing the total to 87, as political support for the fuel has grown. Roughly 40% of the plants are owned by farmers, although a single corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, retains a 25% share of the market.