Hey all! I've been working hard on this conversion kit over the past few months. Plug-In Supply finally published a video to show to the public. Check it out: This conversion kit will be avaliable January of 2010 for $15,000 installed. -Kiet
I'm VERY proud of Ford ... not only for building the 1st SUV hybrid (just a few months ahead of our Lexus rx-400h) ... but for doing so, even as GM scoffed at hybrids as a PR stunt. My question is, WHY in the world didn't Plugin-Supply program their product for the highlander hybrid?? If you think Escape hybrid hardware is similar to the Toyota platform, how much MORE so is Toyota's Hi-hy? Then there's the cost. At $15K, what Escape owner can afford it? Aren't people buying Escape hybrids because they're the cheapest, smallest, least feature-rich hybrid SUV available? Contrast Escape's hybrid, with Toyota/Lexus AWD, extra efficient Atkinson engine, 450hp (camry platformed) hybrid SUV Lexus RX. Out the door, these babys can easily run you in excess of $60,000. And yet between the similar Hi-hy & RX, VOLUME-wise, there are a TON more units produced than Ford's offering. We called Plugin-supply over a year ago ... offering up our RX as a doner car, if they needed one for product developement, to a very tepid-disinteresred "no thanks". Great product you got there, plugin-Supply ... its an engineering marvel. But "she-who-must-be-obeyed" aint going to give up the RX's extra roomyness, power, handling, AWD capable, 7-way adjustable lumbar supported-heated seats, towing capacity ... and other endless list of goodies, so she can spend an EXTRA $15,000 ... only to end up with a smaller-econo sized, less well-equipped SUV hybrid. Nope. If Plugin-supply's marketing were even half as great as their engineering-products, they'd be better off IMO.
Well, about half a year ago, I was hired to work with PIS as an engineer. This is when I started working on additional software that improved the Prius PHEV product line. My next project was the Ford Escape Hybrid. We're done with that now, at least for the first release of the FEH conversions. Our goal is to work on the Toyota Hi-hy ASAP. It's a bit more complicated than "just programming the product for the highlander hybrid". In our industry, Toyota doesn't hand out their system architecture documents to engineers to tinker with. We have to spend weeks and sometimes months to reverse engineer a vehicle's power train. Rest assured, I'm sure I'll be working on the Toyota Highlander Hybrid very soon.
Hi Kiet, would you pls. comment on the availability/compatibility with the latest hybrid generation, I gather it's not a problem with Ford at the moment, but the gen3 Toyota apparently needs completely different approach for 3rd party PHEV systems. It has been discussed in the bellow linked thread, any comments? Is it in development/consideration or not at all? http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...lug-in-hybrid-electric-vehicle-project-6.html
