Hymotion L5's in Canada

For now the Hymotion conversion is PST exempt but we will have to collect GST.

 

Will you have the details up on your website soon? When will you know about the 7% duty and I still didn't get whether the 14495 included the GST or not.

Thanks

 

We will take the chance and say that it will be duty free and invoice you accordingly. It could take months to get a ruling from the Canadian Gov. about NFTA compliance.

We do have to charge the GST so it will be $14495 plus GST.

 

Whoa! That's a lot of money. I think you guys better sharpen your pencil.

 

such a shame there is no hymotion chip dealers for the ontario region as well, but at 15k CND a pop its really not looking like a good deal at the moment.

 

I live in Ontario where the City of Toronto has converted some Priuses with the Hymotion package. I had a chance to drive one at last summer's Expo or Green Living Show - not sure - where the city demonstrated the car. I was very impressed!

I am driving a 2008 Prius (that is when I can wrestle it away from my wife) and I was thinking about the conversion. See my sign in - plug-it-in Eh?

So I started to 'discover' the details such as; the cost $BRRR, the unavailability of this mod in Canada, the added weight, the loss if storage, loss of access to the Tim Horton (doughnut) spare and concerns about the warranty.

In summary. Congratulations to Hymotion. Without them the viability of converting existing Pri's to PHEVs would have never been proven. However, I think - I hope -we are entering a new phase of conversions soon, where swap-out of the stock NiMh battery with some version of a Lithium pack will become a reality. For my $10K - hopefully less - this is the ultimate nirvana. To underline my point, check out Hybrids Plus - Energy Efficient Transportation Technologies . As more solutions become available we will likely have a the better price - a little competition never hurts.

Also, slightly used or even (ab)used NiMh batteries can be recycled! They have expensive minerals that can be reused. Just like our lead acid batteries. Hence we should have some sort of 'rebate'.

My Prius has a plug-in future! But I will just hang on for now. (My first Sony video camera was the size of a cinder-block. But I bypassed the brick size Motorola cellphones. I am wiser now - haha)

I am regularly getting between 4.9 and 5.3 (winter) l/100km without any serious effort. Much better than my 4 cyl. Camry. I am a happy Prius owner.

 

Biggest problem with the L5 - but not really it's fault -
If anything - I am trying to bug people to actually make charge locations available. I live in a condo in humber valley and there be no charging here - or on the street or ANYWHERE!

To Plug-it-in - beware the plug-in systems that replace the OE batt - if they ever throw a fault or develop any type of problem - you're cooked - hopefully not literally - but your car is useless. The prius OEM battery is about as dependable as you could imagine - as much as I'd like to drop that weight - unless it's done by Toyota or has some serious credulity going for it - no way. The Prius is not as straight forward to talk to as it seems and lot's of aftermarket PHEV replace-o-batts have been problematic.

 

any Canadian that has this upgrade wanna comment for review? I'm sure there are high mileage prius that are past warranty that are thinking about this upgrade rather than purchasing a brand new 2010 prius.


for the REV site does that price includes the upgraded rear shocks? 3 year warranty is not too bad but 13,500 at least the price dropped.

 

On Oct 6 I had the Enginer.us kit installed in Vancouver by Electric Autosports. It's so much cheaper (~$4000) than the hymotion and it works well.

 

I agree with all comments above. There is no question that Toyota has 'mastered' the use of their NiMH batteries. I am not aware that anyone has problems with them.
AS a result there is no way I will mess around with my 2008 Prius before I am out of warranty - unless of course Toyota offers a plug-in conversion at a reasonable cost.

I was getting between 4.9 and 5.1 l/100km up to now. With the colder weather I am 'fighting' for 5.4 l/100km - the heater seems to do it, which is no surprise.

 

Not to poke at things off topic here, but I'd say there is an equal chance that an auxiliary battery style conversion could leave you stranded. Just because the batteries are physically separated does not mean that a DC/DC converter system could not overheat or arc causing a burn-out or worse. By replacing the Prius battery all together one eliminates the issues associated with charging it in the first place which can (assuming the system is designed and installed properly) lead to a more reliable system.

The Plugin Conversion Corp system uses the exact same Nickle Metal Hydride chemistry that's already in the Prius for their battery replacement system (which is obviously a proven chemistry).

All that said however, the Prius is still a very complicated piece of machinery. It's no small task to fully replace the battery properly.

Andrew

 

I agree. Prius is a very complex machine and a lot can go wrong once 'Pandora's box' is opened and tinkered with. You not only must be 'in the know' of what you are doing, but the quality of workmanship must be equal to Toyota's - excellent. I have seen much smaller than a Prius battery 'upgrade' blow up because of poor, careless workmanship. (Like a chandelier fall onto the dining room table during Xmas dinner in a new home!) The loss of quality control over this is a good enough reason for Toyota to void warranty when the car's electrical system is worked on.

But assuming that the job is well done, I would still be undecided to pick between a Lithium add-on or a replaced/upgraded NiMH battery pack.

 

It really comes down to how powerful of a system you want. If you want something that can pull a large amount of current for extended periods of time (say any sort of practical electric driving at speeds over 30 mph) you really need to replace the battery. Auxiliary packs simply can't feed enough energy fast enough to the OEM pack to keep up with the current draw (unless of course you have a massive DC/DC converter--but I'm pretty sure the cost of such a converter would be substantially more than it would cost to replace the battery in the first place). Most DC/DC converters being used in the lithium addon kits these days only transfer about 10 to 25 amps--which the car routinely pulls around 100 amps in electric acceleration.

That said though, if you just want something to give you a mild MPG boost for normal driving then an auxiliary lithium style pack may be good enough.

Andrew