Plug in Hybrid conversion

As with anything high-tech, the cost is never reasonable (unless your rich and willing to spend more then 1/4 to 2x the price of the car to upgrade it to a plugin).

The latest battery technology is expensive and unproven.

 

Are there any car makers who offered any conversions before?
AFAIK, I know none. Anyone?

Ken@Japan

 

I got the Hymotion conversion, and I think that's still the least expensive turn-key conversion you can get. For an individual, that will cost about $11K with shipping and installation. (Fleet owners can get a significant price break off that.) Before the nosedive in the price of oil, Hymotion was selling them about as fast as they could make them. Don't know what the status is now.

From the standpoint of total cost, at $4/gallon for gas, it was marginal at best -- I'd have had to keep the car for something over 200,000 miles for the conversion to pay for itself. At $1/gallon (which I think we may see pretty soon now), it'll never make sense strictly from the standpoint of cost savings.

My family goes the extra step of buying wind-based electricity. (At least, that's the theory, what we actually do is mail a larger check to the electric company each month). So you can tell where we're coming from on this.

There are also a number of kits, but my reading on most of those is that the cheaper ones rely on lead batteries, which imho is a loser -- lower up-front cost but higher long-term cost due to the need for frequent battery replacement (not to mention recycling a few hundred pounds of lead every three years.)

The Hymotion batteries have been tested to 3,000 full discharge/recharge cycles without "failure" (meaning, continuing to hold at least 80% of original charge), which means they ought to last the typical life of the car. Although, of course, you won't know that as a fact for some time yet, and there are only few tens of them out there with >2 years on the road. But so far so good. Mine works as advertised -- we're getting low-90's gas mileage (though of course we are expending grid electricity to achieve that, and actual mileage is quite sensitive to how the car is driven, so not everyone could achieve that, and some are going to do much better than that.)

FWIW, A123 (the battery manufacturer for the Hymotion conversions) also sells to DeWalt Tool, so their battery packs are on the shelf now as a mainstream hardware-store product. So it's not really all that exotic any more.

The way I see it, durable lithium-ion batteries are popping up all over the place these days. Basically, they've now figured out a number of different chemical and physical configurations that yield long-lived and relatively inert lithium batteries. So you have a whole bunch of manufacturers who are getting in on the game. China's largest battery maker (BYD) bought itself a car maker so that it could sell EVs and PHEVs -- kind of a nice inversion of the pecking order. I'm not sure what the (near-term) plunge in the price of oil is going to do to all that ($34/bbl today and falling), but it's pretty clear for the longer term that the basic technology is abundant, and that the raw materials are not too expensive (e.g., no scarce or rare materials required). It'll just be a question of getting the average cost down through volume production.

On the downside, the fact that this is a retrofit introduces some limitations that are kind of a pain, and that I'm pretty sure Toyota could avoid when building a PHEV from scratch. I have an EV switch installed, so I can get in the car and drive it like an EV - the gas engine never starts. Nice for getting around town. But if you hit 34 MPH, the gas engine has to start. That's unfortunate when a lot of the streets around here are 35 MPH. I also get the impression (backed up by some studies from one of the US national labs) that the configuration of stock Prius software plus retrofit PHEV kit gives you less than optimal performance. Above 34 MPH, you end up spending a lot of the time using the engine at relatively low load, which tends to be inefficient. You'd think that if you integrated the systems better you could squeeze better performance out of it. Oh, and the other thing the national labs studies showed is that the car runs dirtier because the engine runs colder with the PHEV kit installed. Not a huge difference, and running dirtier than an extremely clean baseline, but it's another indicator that the retrofit approach is a little less than optimal.

But basically, no serious complaints here. Works as advertised.

 

If you get your electricity from a coal-fired power plant a PHEV provides no net greenhouse gas reduction. And as chogan2 points out, at $11K (and even with $4 gas) it's very hard to get any payback of direct costs from a conversion.

 

Even if your electricity is 100% coal as the source, it is 2x more efficient than using gasoline alone to power your vehicle.

 

Probably even higher efficiency that that. It's WAY easier to scrub one set of coal fired furnaces, than a 100,000 cars. Sheesh just do the math. That 'dirty coal' argument went out with the 1960's ... back before the high tech coal furnace scrubbers came in vogue. Plus, when you factor in all the hydroelectric, wind, solar, nuke generation, the equation gets much better.

 

Yes, coal power plant exhaust can be thoroughly scrubbed of all pollutants, except CO2. That's the problem. Gasoline stores much of its energy in hydrogen, which becomes water. Coal is almost entirely carbon.

Back-of-envelope: driving a Prius 45 miles uses about one gallon of gasoline, which releases 9 kg of CO2. Driving a PHEV 45 miles on electricity alone might in a good case use 20 kW-hours of electricity, which, delivered from a coal-fired power plant and including transmission and conversion losses required about 10 kg of coal to produce and created about 20 kg of CO2.

If you/your electric utility gets most of your/its energy from something other than coal then an EV or PHEV could well cause a net reduction of greenhouse gasses. But don't assume that is so.

 

Assuming your guesses are roughly correct, what about the CO2 produced in the production of gasoline, not just the burning of it?

 

Sorry to hear you're on ly in the 90s. I was hoping you'd keep it up over 110 mpg.

 

Nobody has a grid that is 100% coal. The average for the USA is about 50%.
In my area of the Pacific Northwest, we are actually 70% hydroelectric, 10% wind, 2% nuclear and the rest is a mix of coal and natural gas.

The trend is actually towards more wind energy in the electric grid. Over 30% of new energy projects in the USA are wind energy. Most of the rest are natural gas. Coal plants are being blocked more often.

So moving our transportation to Plug-In Hybrids (like a Hymotion Prius or Volt) or pure electric vehicles, is actually a postive trend to be supported.
Because the end effect on CO2 emmissions can be controlled by how clean we make our grid.

If we stay stuck with only gasoline vehicles, then there is not even the option of reducing our CO2 output.
With plug-ins, we have the ability to control the output from the transportation sector.

 

I'm still waiting for A123-hymotion to do conversions in Arizona. I'd have to drive to San Fran or Denver which doesn't make sense. They have been holdiong my 1K deposit for about a year but I will wait for an AZ location to come up in 2009 .

I still get 50-70 all the time with my 05 prius by driving like I care. My best is 84 mpg but most days it's about 58-60. Even with AC on or in the cold it's above the EPA numbers. Only 1-2 mile trips my wife takes at lunch time are below 50 mpg. I'd walk or take my bicycle for that distance

When I get the plug-in option I'm sure I will get 100-300 most of the time. I can't wait. Even with low gas prices it will pay. I also have grid tied solar so I charge 100% clean.

 

Hi all, I have the L5 in my Prius here in Miami for the past 4 months. I had to turn the system off just to burn the gas that was in the tank. (for fear that it would go bad) I simply enjoy the fact that I am a pioneer in doing the conversion. I have had no problems at all with the system so far. (allmost 90 percent of my driving is EV only) The system does perform as advertized.

Grant

 

Good question. I don't know how much CO2 is produced during gasoline or coal production. A few minutes of googling does not turn up an answer for either.

But it did find this Electric Vehicles - CO2 from Electricty vs Gasoline
which describes the US average to be 0.6 kg of CO2 produced for each kW-hr of electricity, versus the 0.5 kg I guesstimated. It also quotes 0.1 kW-hr of energy would be used per mile by a demonstrator "Oscar" electric vehicle, much less than my estimate of 0.45. A GM Volt should use 13 kW-hr to go 40 miles. Assuming Volt's CO2 efficiency and the US average for electricity, and neglecting the CO2 produced during energy production, PHEV versus 45 MPG gasoline is still a wash in terms of CO2.

Anyone concerned about global warming should use whatever non-fossil electricity sources they can starting now. PHEVs will then certainly magnify the benefit.

 

I think it's good opinion.
But, the US's major capacity addition is going to coal.
Electric Power Annual - Planned Nameplate Capacity Additions from New Generators, by Energy Source

Ken@Japan

 

Yes, despite all the happy talk about conservation, wind, and Solar, US utility operators are racing to build as much coal-fired capacity as they can ASAP. Anyone who cares should investigate whether they are in the service area of a utility that will provide 100% renewable or wind power, and if so buy it. They should also write their congresspeople to urge restrictions on carbon.

To help put a point on this: the observed rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 indicates that natural processes can absorb no more than about 15 billion tonnes of the man-made gas annually, or about 2 tonnes per human per year. If you drive alone about 9000 miles per year in a Prius you've already used up your CO2 emission allotment, never mind the fossil-fueled electricity you used and the non-local food you ate. We all are soon going to have to make some very significant changes in the ways we support our standard of living.

 

My hunch is because the next administration won't be allow them. Coal is Chu's "worst nightmare!"