Photovoltaic cells on my 2012 prius C results

there is a thread here about someone putting a pis kit in thier c. try a search. not sure if they finished it yet.

 

can you give us some specs and post a pic of the roof please?

 

thanks, i mentioned the pis thread because you asked if anyone knew of a way to upgrade battery capacity.

 

1 amp isnt enough to charge a laptop, much less make an appreciable difference in fuel economy.

 

I've not seen the setup here, but i'm guessing: During driving the solar panels essentially do nothing. They just trickle charge the battery when the car is parked, like for a top off... and 1 amp charges an iphone (5v usb), but the guy said he's had a max of 72volts, it will should charge up the battery slowly.

 

Yes it is, if it is 1 amp at 73 volts. That works out to 73 Watts. and that works out to just about exactly 1/10th of a horse power.

The trouble with extending the size of the battery is that even if the size were doubled you still could not drive very far or very fast in EV mode. And doubling the battery would take up the entire rear seat. It would be easy to do. Simply buy a second Prius C battery and wire it in parallel with the existing one. The trouble is you spend well over a $1,000+ and give up all the storage and or the entire rear seat and STILL you don't have a practical EV mode.

Now we see why the plug-in cars cost $40K to build. The entire car is filled with batteries that cost about $10K at wholesale prices.

I do know some one who is building a real EV. He is starting with a used small size pickup truck. Then he loads plain old lead acid marine batteries in the front half of the truck bed. He has about 1,000 pounds of batteries in there.

One more idea. Back to how best to use these 73W of rooftop PV panel. I think (1) charge the battery if it is low then (2) if the battery is charged divert the power to an engine block heater. The Prius C uses a lot of gas simply to heat the engine in the first few minutes of driving. The block heater will pre-heat the engine. The other use of 73W is to pre-heat or cool the interior so you do not waste power doing that in the first mile

 

I believe the batterys are never fully charged and of coarse discharged which is how the battery life is so good.

I would go with the bike rack on the rear. Much less drag.

 

Ever so often people come on here and make claims like this. I think this is a troll. He started posting on Dec. 2nd and finished posting on Dec 2nd. He claims to have a picture but won't or hasn't shown it.

Here are some things for all reading to consider.

1) Keep your guard up. People know this is the website to find people serious about increasing mpg's and they also know money won't be too much of an objection (most Prius owners aren't poor and are willing to pay for increasing mpg (even if there is no ROI))
2) The Pruis (any Prius minus Plug In) is designed as a gasoline (primary) car with electric assist. The motors/mg's are not designed for EV only use but are meant to merely supplment the efficient but low powered atkinson cycle engine. No amount of battery modifications will change this.
3) The reason the Prius has a "small" battery is b/c that's all it needs to allow the mg's to supplement the ICE. Once up to speed (above 42), the ICE now has the power necessary to keep it there and recharge the battery to allow for the next cycle of stop and go.

The Prius and Toyota's HSD is an engineering marvel that is ingeniously simple. Perfecting it has taken years but, like anything else, it has its limitations.

I assure you that if Toyota could just add a larger battery or solar panels and gain a competitive advantage, they would do it. Think about it, what company wouldn't?

 

Agreed. My car comes with a solar panel on the roof yet Toyota figured it wasn't worth the effort to wire it to the battery.