Blue Sky Limousine

A few days ago I watched a news story about a minivan or SUV that was a gas-electric hybrid which had been modified to get 150 miles to the gallon. What they did wasn’t that new; I’d seen the technique before. You take a normal hybrid, and add as many batteries as is feasible. So the SUV has a bunch of batteries sitting near, under or in the trunk. You drive 40 miles, up to 87 mph, on pure electricity. After that you need gas.

One downside is that the vehicle needs plugging in every night. So there’s risk there. What if you lose power? Where does that power come from? Is oil used somewhere along the line to produce that electricity? So even when you plug your SUV into your home outlet, you’d still be using gas.

Or would you?