SAN JOSE, California – 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.

That, according to Andy Grove, the former chairman and CEO of Intel, simply will not do. He's become one of the country's most high-profile plug-in evangelists, reading from a sermon published last month in The American. Now he's issued a Herculean challenge during the Plug-In 2008 conference that had many in the choir singing "Hallelujah!"

He's called on automakers, utilities, researchers and pretty much everyone in Silicon Valley to develop a plan to convert 10 million pickup trucks, vans and SUVs to plug-in hybrids within four years. And he says they should hand it to the next president on Jan. 21.

The scale of what Grove has suggested would be difficult to overstate. After all, Toyota's been cranking out the Prius for a decade and only recently saw it's one-millionth model leave a showroom. General Motors is throwing nearly everything it has at the Chevrolet Volt so it can start selling them – in the low tens of thousands at most and at what undoubtedly will be a loss – by the end of 2010. So how does Grove – and those who hailed him for his chutzpah – propose doing things any faster?

By making it a national priority along the lines of the moon shot. Or a program akin to the New Deal. Only that level of commitment – and investment – will overcome the challenges to so radically transforming the nation's transportation fleet, they say. Grove's suggestions include:

A federal tax credit covering half the cost of retrofitting a vehicle, funded by licensing fees on all vehicles, boats and airplanes.

Free electricity for plug-in hybrids for as long as two years.

An open source approach (which some advocates already employ for home conversions) to developing the technology, and a new federal court to handle intellectual property issues stemming from the development of such vehicles.

Greater investment by venture capitalists to spur innovation in the field.

Support from the Small Business Administration and others to help launch the industry.

Let's assume for the sake of argument the utilities, the automakers, the battery manufacturers, the growing number of plug-in conversion companies and everyone else with an interest in bringing about the inevitable electrification of the automobile can hammer out a plan in four months. And let's assume the next president not only reads it, but enacts it. Then what?

Supporters of Grove's idea suggest starting with the fleets – taxi cabs, delivery vans, municipal vehicles. They get lousy mileage, so the return on investment through reduced operating costs will come much faster, and economies of scale will reduce costs. And since a relatively small number of models - the Ford Crown Victoria, variants of Ford's F-Series trucks, etc. – comprise the majority of fleet vehicles, it'll minimize R&D costs. That's the approach John Dabels, CEO of conversion start-up EV Power Systems, has taken.

"We are focusing on trucks because trucks consume more fuel and, frankly, no one else is doing this," he says. The company is beta-testing a kit that bolts right on behind the transmission with no modification to the engine, emissions system or other major components. Dabels claims the $11,000 conversion delivers a 33 percent increase in fuel economy and "we're reasonably comfortable with getting to 40."

Once you've started that project, Grove's acolytes say, expand the campaign to conventional hybrids – add a cord to your Prius and you'll bump your fuel economy from 60 mph to about 100 mpg – because the job is relatively easy. (Advocates of the cars converted a Prius in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Auto Show last year. That's them in the picture.) Google's been testing a small fleet of converted plug-in Prius and Ford Escape hybrids for about a year now and seen a 50-percent increase in fuel economy over the standard versions. "We've put about 50,000 miles on them without any real problems," says Alec Proudfoot, the guy running the program. "The cars have performed beautifully."

Once the conversion of fleets and hybrids is underway, plug-in proponents say, you go after everyone else. "The low-hanging fruit is out there," says Felix Kramer, founder of the plug-in advocacy group Cal Cars. "There are millions of battered vehicles out there to be converted."

He and other conversion advocates say converted vehicles will hasten the day when automakers fill their showrooms with plug-in hybrids by providing them with a wealth of data regarding how the vehicles perform, how consumers use them and what's needed to keep them going.

But where are we going to get the batteries? How do we ensure converted vehicles meet federal safety standards? Who's going to perform all these conversions, who's going to provide the training to do it and what guarantees will consumers have that the cars will keep running five or 10 years down the line? And perhaps the biggest question of all - what's it going to cost and how are we going to pay for it?

"Ten million conversions at a cost of $10,000 (each)? That's $100 billion," says Tom Molinski, manager of emerging technology for Manitoba Hydro. "How much does the U.S. spend on defense? How much has it spent on Iraq? At some point we have to ask, 'What's the cost of not doing this.'"

Photo by Rainforest Action Network.