What's better than a hybrid car? A plug-in hybrid car of course!

Imagine coming home from work in your Toyota Prius or Ford Escape hybrid and plugging it into a solar panel that produces enough free energy to get you to work and back tomorrow.

Don't believe it?

Last week, Ford reluctantly agreed to let Dave Bernikoff-Raboy, a California rancher, buy an all-electric pickup truck that he had been leasing. Mr. Bernikoff-Raboy essentially forced Ford to sell him the vehicle he loves so much because he can recharge it using a solar panel.

Gasoline electric hybrids are not just a good powertrain to help advance fuel cells, but solar and wind power as well. While Mr. Bernikoff-Raboy's truck is not a hybrid, hybrids offer much of the same potential as electric vehicles with relatively minor adjustments.

Of course, just plugging your car battery into one of your home's sockets does not result in much of a benefit to the environment, because coal typically is the ultimate source of most electricity. Plugging your vehicle into a solar powered socket, on the other hand, produces completely clean energy.

And it's free.

It's not that you have to plug it in, rather it's that you can plug it in.

University of California at Davis Professor Andrew Frank has spent the last decade turning production vehicles into plug-in hybrids using off-the-shelf parts. "We just built a high-performance plug-in hybrid Ford Explorer," he says. "It's 325 horsepower - 200 of that horsepower is electric and 125 is gasoline. This car goes like a rocket, but still gets double the fuel economy of a regular hybrid. And for the first 50 miles it is all electric - zero emissions.(Read More on this)

According to Frank, who flew his Explorer to Toyota's research facilities in Japan so engineers could pore over the vehicle, "There's no question in my mind that Toyota has plans for a plug-in hybrid right now, but they aren't talking about it," he says.

Perhaps in the future, automobile manufacturers could even incorporate solar panels into the roofs of hybrids to provide constant battery charging. Until then, home-owners, solar-roofed parking structures, and portable solar panels could still offer consumers news possibilities and very futuristic accessories.

So, why not give consumers of hybrids as many fuel choices as possible?

The innovativeness of the hybrids, particularly the Toyota Prius, is what inspires so many consumers. Moreover, professor Frank's research demonstrates that the potential of hybrid car technology is only just emerging.

Allowing consumers of such revolutionary technology to help explore that potential would not only increase hybrid car value, but inspire millions of environmentalists, no-blood-for-oil-activists, and back yard scientists.

That would truly be an automotive revolution.

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