wired.com: By Chuck Squatriglia

Plug-in hybrids are a great way to ease our oil addiction and do something about global warming. But it’s taken 10 years for conventional hybrids like the iconic Toyota Prius to eke out almost 3 percent of the domestic market, and nothing suggests cars with cords will take hold any faster.

For that reason, plug-in advocates say, we’ve got to figure out how to start converting a sizable chunk of the nation’s 240 million cars into gas-electric hybrids you can plug into a wall socket. There’s a handful of companies venturing down this path, but they charge as much as 12 grand to do the job and the number of cars they’ve converted would fit inside a Toyota cargo ship with room to spare. [ read more ]