Let's do a simulation experiment and all flush our toilets simultaneously at midnight tonight (PST)!!

That works better in a high rise building and even better with slices of pure sodium wrapped in toilet paper.circa Moody Towers, U of H,

But back to the topic, the grid will have some time to adjust. The US auto industry will not have much.

My understanding is that there is a good bit of inefficiency introduced into our electricity production because our energy usage is not balanced throughout the day, yet we have to have the capacity to meet peak demands. We use so much more power during the day then we do at night; for a moderate number of electric vehicles, the majority of which are charged on a timed system, automatically, we would actually be increasing the efficiency of our electricity production/use.

That is basically true. Different types of power plants have different operating characteristics. The grid has a constant change in load requirements that the power companies have to accommodate. Nuclear power plants are pretty much constant supply and are difficult to adjust. Coal is also difficult to adjust but less so than nuclear. Gas power plants are cheap to build and are infinitely easy to adjust. Therefore the grid combines all three (plus hydro, wind, and solar) to put out the needed amps. If they are slow to increase power, you get a brownout. If they are slow to decrease power you get a spike.

Most power is used during the day and most cars would charge during the night so, for awhile, the power is supplied to the cars without extra plants being required. More power being produced without extra plants being built equates to higher efficiency.

An important point is that most of the fuel we use to make electricity is not imported with the exception of natural gas from Canada. Recently we were buying 700 billion dollars a year of foreign oil. I haven't looked to see what it is at this time.

Electric cars seem all well and good.

But here's seomthing for you to try at home.

Buy a pack of D Cell batteries and throw them in your freezer for a few hours.

The take them out and put them in your flaslight. Take a look at how long it takes for those batteries to die.

The ONE THING I have NEVER heard addressed is what cold weather does to battery efficiency.

A Chevy Volt, or any other electirc car, basically wouldn't be worth a spit in Northern/cold climates.

The batteries would be around half as efficient, and would need replacing ( VERY expensive ) far more often thatn they would if they were in a car driven in a warmer climate.

So...would it be worth it to spend 40K on a Volt where I live?? Nope.

When I was in Alaska, we used Lithium batteries in our cameras and they worked fine.

Most electric vehicles are using Lithium also. The chemistry is changing constantly to get better performance but current Lithium Iron Phosphate electric vehicle batteries have a working temp range of -20C to 70C. Severe cold may require a heater just like a diesel.