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It's called the ReCharge, a concept car from Volvo to be unveiled officially next week at the Frankfurt Auto Show, it's a plug-in hybrid with a battery-only range of 100 km before you need to have the car's four-cylinder 1.6-liter Flexfuel engine kick in to power the car and recharge the battery.

"My feeling is that the kind of plug-in hybrid currently proposed by different auto makers can be best described as a battery electric vehicle equipped with an unnecessary fuel engine and fuel tank. ... I'm not sure what kind of real advantages they [plug-ins] would have. ... I don't think that [plug-ins] will contribute to the global environment or to reducing carbon dioxide."

After safety, the longevity of the batteries in a plug-in hybrid is the greatest unknown. Can a plug-in hybrid’s battery pack retain the bulk of its energy capacity over 10 years of daily use and more than 4000 full-discharge cycles? (For a deeper look at the challenges facing plug-in hybrid batteries, see “Lithium Batteries Take to the Road”.)[ LINK: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep07/5490 ] As Don Hillebrand of Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, said tartly, “Batteries are the showstopper.” Periodic demands from the grid, even for only a small fraction of the battery’s stored energy, would clearly affect the cells’ life span—but no one has data on how much. Another open issue is the development of creative financing models for replacement battery packs costing several thousand U.S. dollars even after mass production is achieved. Third-party battery leasing could be one answer, if combined with a secondary market for batteries whose performance has fallen below automotive levels. Carmakers, electric utilities, and large consumer-financing groups are quietly batting around these notions to see if they can build a financial model that makes sense for all three parties.

Toyota is testing a Plug-in HV. According to Autoblog Green1, the second step in development “is a car with an electric-only range of 30-60 KM (60 KM = 37 Miles),” Presumably, this would be with advanced lithium batteries. Meanwhile, initial tests are with the addition of another NiMH battery pack and a plug-in hybrid vehicle capable of just 8 all-electric miles.

In the future, utilities will pay you to plug-in your vehicle. Millions will plug-in their electric vehicles (EV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and fuel cell vehicles (FCV) at night when electricity is cheap, then plug-in during the day when energy is expensive and sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid.

Electrified transportation is the use of electrical power to run transportation vehicles and related facilities. Electricity has long been used to power transportation in the Seattle area where 150 King County Metro electric trolley buses serve 14 routes covering 115 miles. Now electrical power options are spreading to port facilities, medium-duty trucks, school buses and truck stops. Most importantly, electricity is emerging to power cars and light-duty vehicles in the form of gasoline-electric hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) which can use grid power and run longer on batteries than regular hybrids. These options are explored in the FAQ below. These questions and answers are derived from a 2007 ETWG Briefing Report written by Rich Feldman, Apollo Alliance and Patrick Mazza, Climate Solutions.

Today there are roughly 2 million hybrids in the global car park of 820 million vehicles—or far less than 1 percent. And there are fewer than 200 plug-in hybrids. Before we start thinking about other uses for the battery packs in such vehicles, Kjaer all but begged his audience, “let's just get the batteries driving the wheels first!”

Plug-in cars, some that rely solely on electricity and some that marry an electric motor with a gasoline motor for better mileage and fewer emissions, are slowly making their way into the mainstream. And it's not just because they replace most or all of the gasoline used to fuel the typical car with cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity.

Plug In America drives change. We accelerate the shift to plug-in vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment.

I originally wrote this article for The Hybrid Debate. The Hybrid Debate encourages people to consider how their choice of car affects the world we live in and imagine how mass acceptance of hybrid technology could influence other aspects of our lives. The aim is to encourage informed analysis and public debate amongst advocates and sceptics of the new technology.

HySeries Drive plug-in hybrid. Electricity only for 25 miles (with a 336-volt lithium-ion battery pack). Serial hybrid, with the fuel cell (or think biofuel system) recharging the battery pack, not directly driving the wheels.

Okay, maybe the idea of having plug-in hybrids and electric cars that interact with the grid is far off in the future. But we all have to admit that it's an attractive future. It means as the grid gets cleaner, so do vehicle emissions. It means millions of cars collectively act as a huge battery storage system, drawing power when it's cheap and selling it back to the grid at a premium.

Scientists at the University of Michigan, using a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), are exploring plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) that not only use grid electricity to meet their power needs, but return it to the grid, earning money for the owner.

Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads

Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads

Car makers, electric car chargers, two mayors and one prime minister all made the call for more electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars and an infrastructure to support the vehicles.

HT's sales director Frank Ziegler told Wired they're not interested in doing plug-in hybrids because they don't want to be dependent on gasoline