Plug in Prius modification from the UK 135 MPG

[dcfirefighter]

That may be 112 mpg in the US, I suppose they use imperial gallons.

Sorry, it's a .PDF, 2 page article starting on page 8. There's lots of other stuff that is interesting to folks on this forum - I haven't read it all yet.



http://www.east-journal.co.uk/east_nov05_vol3_no5.pdf

[lectrobyte]

1. Anyone know of someone offering a similar modification in the states?

[jobycom]

2. There's been a lot of talk about it

Last I heard a couple of companies in California were doing it. Some cities, like Austin, have even started incentive programs, so their should be more companies out there.

What they do is load you up with more batteries, and the car runs off the batteries until they drain, and then the regular hybrid system kicks in. You plug it in at night to charge the batteries, unlike the regular hybrid system. So the mileage really varies. If you drive a short distance to work, your mileage may increase dramatically, like to almost nothing, because you will do most of the running on the add-on batteries. If you live further away, your gas usage will be nil until the batteries die, then you will start the normal hybrid mileage. So for long road trips, the mileage won't improve as much.

One warning: the Prius hybrid must be driven at least once every two weeks, so if you got this system, you'd have to make sure to drive it off the motor at least that often.

[Throckmorton]

3. I didn't see any reference to the cost of a recharge.

They do say it takes 9 hours for a full recharge, but never say how many KW-Hrs it takes for this recharge.

How much is electricity per Kw-Hr in the UK? How much is gasoline per Gallon?

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Ideal-world guesstimate

They do say it has 27 times a normal Prius' capacity: I've seen this elsewhere listed as 1.3 Kwh, which would make 35.1 Kwh in total. (Quite a jump over the other 9kwh plug-in conversions)

Cost per kwh depends on the supplier, but between 8-10p seems reasonable, so the recharge would be £4.21 to £5.26 (Capacity plus 50%, According to http://www.powerstream.com/NiMH.htm) But this is assuming you have access to a loss-free superconducting transformer, of course... :) Anyone care to throw figures in for that?

Gas works out to £3.41 per US Gallon

[momzno1]

5. Why don't they use solar panels on the roof of the car to help recharge

the battery?

[lectrobyte]

6. Probably wouldn't generate that much power, the roof's pretty small.

[bananas]

7. Someone did it already

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/08/solarpoweraugme.html
http://www.lapprenewables.com/hybrid%20project.html

[Kolesar]

8. Some day, folks will be happy just to have a battery powered car

with a 100 mile range and a "rather small" battery. "Just get me to work and back". The rich will have gasoline cars and pay $15/gallon so they can go on vacation.

[dcfirefighter]

9. I hope not

I think that the external costs of automobile operation are too great to keep them as the prime form of tranport for the majority of people.

I'd rather see and end to commuting, and a return to liveable, transit based, largely car-free cities.

The only folks who'd have cars would be rural folks who need acreage to be productive, and therefore must live a too low a density to support transit.

Ideally, A city would have a combination of free (paid for out of the value they create for landowners) subways and surface trams, as well as farebox-paid electric taxis, or perhaps Personal Rapid Transit.

Commercial shared cars, and the cars of visitors and the like, could be stored in peripheral garages. The majority of trips would be made on foot or bicycle, a lesser amount using the rapid transit. With only the occasional trip to a destination not served by transit, most people would only own a share in a pool of cars, and use them for the rare trip to the country.

[Kolesar]

10. In what country?

I don't think that would work even in our inner ring suburbs, where the housing density is as dense as the big city itself.

[dcfirefighter]

11. You're probably right, just a hope

Given time and the pressures of economics, anything is possible.

It starts with building transit which increases land values
Then the land values spur development
Then the cars get kicked out, block by block, for pedestrian plazas
Then some of the space is reclaimed for parklands.

[Kolesar]

12. Send crews with picks upstate to bust up the freeways to make farmland

I read that in a sci-fi story when I was a teenager. Uh, that was a while ago.