Plugging in to the automotive future

GREEN LIVING

Plugging in to the automotive future

Robb Protheroe plans to manufacture a device that converts a 50 mpg Toyota Prius into a 130 mpg plug-in hybrid electric vehicle
Published: Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007

By STEVE BOGA
FOR THE ARGUS-COURIER

Robb Protheroe has had his sights set on electric cars since he was a kid growing up in Montreal. At age 12, he built a go-kart, installed an electric motor yanked from an old furnace, then rounded up all the extension cords he could find and plugged it in. "I drove that go-kart around in circles until the cord twisted and broke. "It was my first brush with electric cars," he says, chuckling.

Although he's a self-described "motor head," a lifelong student of the internal-combustion engine, he has come to believe that electric cars are our future. "The public has a misperception of electric cars," he says. "They think of them as golf carts puttering around the course. But in fact they consistently outperform gasoline vehicles."

And of course they are more environmentally friendly, leaving a fainter carbon footprint. It's the environmental issue that rekindled Protheroe's interest in electrics. He recently read a newspaper article about the California Cars Initiative, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit startup of entrepreneurs, engineers, environmentalists and consumers promoting 100-plus mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Protheroe, wanting to know more about hybrids, contacted the people at CalCar and volunteered to help them convert a car to a plug-in hybrid.

With his mechanical engineering background (a degree from Carleton University in Ottawa), he figured he could do more to help. So Protheroe and his son, Chuck, 21, designed a battery box, reducing conversion time from a week to two days. "Now our target is one day, eight man hours," says Protheroe. "That'll soon be possible with my 'factory-made' parts."

Protheroe is starting a business to manufacture the components needed to convert a 50-mpg Toyota Prius to a 138 plus or minus mpg PHEV. A heavy-duty battery pack will supplement the Toyota's existing battery, and a circuit board will interface with the Toyota computer. Once installed, the components promote the electric drive while suppressing the use of the gas engine. "The result," Protheroe says, "is a car that runs better and can get over three times the gas mileage. The record is something like 188 miles per gallon by some guy in Seattle."

To recharge a PHEV, you simply plug it into a standard 120-volt outlet, and it draws the cheapest power available, while you sleep.

It sounds so simple, you wonder why everyone isn't converting to PHEVs.

"It's not simple," Protheroe insists. "It's complicated and the hardware costs at least $10,000. If the car companies were mass-producing them, it would cost maybe half that, but they've done everything they can to block it, as they always do."

Indeed, the car companies have a history of fighting every innovation — seat belts, catalytic converters, air bags — crying plaintively that change will bankrupt them. In each case, Congress stepped in and legislated, but when it comes to hybrids, it has been unwilling to lead or follow. "They can't even get fuel standards raised," says Protheroe. "Car manufacturing has actually changed very little in the past hundred years. In Henry Ford's day, cars got about 20 miles per gallon, and they don't do much better now."

According to Protheroe, what he and a handful of other engineers are creating uses off-the-shelf technology. "The car companies say it doesn't exist, that it'll cost billions to develop it. That's total bull. We have all the pieces. I believe there is substance to the conspiracy theory that the car companies and the oil companies are in bed together. It's appalling. And since few people seemed to be doing anything about it, and since I like to be thought of as a man of action, I got involved."

Protheroe and his wife own a candy store in Petaluma called Winsome Lass on Western Avenue. He laughs. "I'm an engineer who is captive in a candy store, which gives me plenty of time to ponder these things. That store is going to be the first place on the planet with this conversion technology displayed in the window. I imagine people walking by and saying, 'Wow, I want that for my car.'"

(Contact Steve Boga at [email protected])

Whole article with pics here.

 

I don't know about the type of batteries, but I believe the kit is available now. I am fairly certain he knows about the other guys. And even knows THEM.

Hey, the guy runs a candy store and has hybrid battery packs in the window. What could he possibly do better????