My wife drives our 2008 Prius like a gas only car.:cheer2: It's peddle to the metal. Engines always running, battery is always full. My quesiton: Once The gen lV has batteries full from solar production. My wife backs out of her garage and now on the street. Nothing is in front of her, seat belt on, helmet tight. Peddle to the metal. WILL THE ENGINE COME ON?? Will this electric car thing, ever have a chance in our household? I don't drive it. I don't know what to do! I hope, my only help is not the Leaf, with no gas engine. Vern :twitch:
Re: Peddle to the metal... There may be an issue with range with a Leaf, but it should make the wife happy- I read somewhere that the official 0-60 for the Leaf is about 7 seconds.
Tideland Prius, No, but they well be the PHV. When a few of them are out in 2011 and I make a choice of which one. Vern :alien:
That was from a guy reading his watch wrong on the edmond's green blog. He already did a partial admission of not having any idea of how to use a watch to time anything. Real figure is supposed to be 9-10 seconds very similar to the prius. phv is scheduled for summer of 2012, it is not supposed to be available in 2011 except as a test car. There is not even a rumor of recharging solar panels on the phv. If the solar sunroof is available it likely will only power the fans while parked and not charge the batteries.
Even if connected, PV panels wouldn't do much for charging the HV battery unless you park a lot closer to the sun. Maybe Ford could introduce them on one of its Mercury models. Tom
Tideland, gbee42, I've got the solar covered> Grid tie solar system, comes on when the panels reach 244 volts at about 8:30AM. Running two 5,000 watt inverters. I'm generating 220v at 50 amps in sunlight hours. I could make the Prius glow, but I only want the battery charged. I'm grid tie, so on off hours I pull off the grid, if I need to charge the Prius. Then when the sun comes out, it puts back what I used. Plus I store kWh on the grid, when any excess is generated. I pulled back my built-up credit. No they don't buy it back! Actually it's booting the inverters now and it's 7:30 AM. Live monitor Solar project (lots of dumb videos) austingreen, Got it. Vern :twitch:
very cool solar project. I'm surprised your utility won't buy the power back. Don't get too mad at your wife, we will have fast electrics soon that cost less than that tesla. Even the phv prius will use less gas than with her lead foot, like mine, than most efficient drivers with a regular prius. The current phv gen III prototypes don't have an ev button to lock it down, but the engine will come on in hard acceleration then turn off. Maybe they will add a button to keep the engine off by the time they are in production.
austingreen, I did not want it on house, thus the ramada. Might build future shop under ramada. Just finished separate 100 amp sub to ramada, for future use. Plan another sub to 3 car garage where shop is now, 2 ton central air. I do everything myself, so cost is way down. It took 6 years to build house, moved in 1976. Vern :twitch: