Is it possible to charge a prius by putting the rear tires on a "Treadmill" ? Not an actual treadmill but, something that will turn the rear wheels. Once the battery is charged you can use the aftermarket EV button and drive around to store and back without using any gas? FRom what i can see, the wheels charge the battery when your foot goes off the accelerator in coast mode. So in essence, if the car was jacked up and the wheels turned, the battery should charge up with its own mechanisms. You should only need a motor or something that will turn the wheels? I havent tried it yet, but just shooting out the idea for some feed back... 2004 prius
The rear wheels spin freely and are not connected to the transaxle. You would have to spin the front wheels. This would be equivalent to descending a mountainous road.
Why the rear wheels? The Prius is front-wheel drive. Turning the rear wheels will accomplish nothing.
The HV Battery is completely disconnected except when the Prius is READY; the car would have to be on, and in Drive, not ideal from a safety perspective.
are you thinking of hooking the treadmill to a set of bicycle pedals? or a waterwheel in the river next to your house? welcome to p/c, great first post!
Bwah hahahahaha. Ive heard some things in my day but..... OP, your real name doesnt happen to be Red Green does it? I bet you have an old K-Car cut in half mated with a truck bed sitting out front dont you?
Haha, I love this forum. I thought about ferris buellers day off actually, but, safety first. I would lift the front wheels up on my lift and set the fronts onto a electric motor to turn the front wheels. I was wondering if the power would have to be on, but Im gettting that it would. I dont think the ice engine would come on unless i forget to turn off ac or something. The concept would work under the right circumstances however,...i believe. I do like the bike pedalling idea to run the power..haha. ..i have solar on my roof and it generates plenty of power so i was thinking of an electric motor, just to top off the power. The car would only be in the ev mode to run to store, gym, close jobs etc. If it was done properly, the car COULD be used to generate its own power if the wheels were turned equivalent to transcending a mountain. PLease let me know if there is anything else I would or should consider.
unless you have a plug in pack, you won't go very far in pure ev mode. I believe with a stand alone stock prius battery, you only get something to the tune of 1mile before it is depleted.
^^^ Yep, one cannot go very far on EV only on a non-PiP. Let's assume somehow the electricity for the OP is free.... what would be the cost of setting up a roller system to turn the front wheels while the the car's in READY mode? If the car's off, the parking pawl should be engaged, preventing the wheels from turning (unless he wants to try to break it). I can't see how anything like this is even close to worth it. OP is better off grille blocking in winter and using an engine block heater (regardless of season) to cut the warmup time.
Furthermore, how much energy is wasted by the roller system, in comparison to a plug-in charging method? I'd posit that one could charge the batteries much quicker if they weren't wasting mechanical energy... Speaking of wasted energy, has anyone measured the gains in efficiency for the few minutes worth of increased mileage, versus the energy consumed by an engine block heater? Seems like a lot of work for little gain...
Regardless of the difficulties, I like your thinking OP! Never considered this... And I regularly drive ~1 mile on EV and this only costs me ~2bars. BTW: the Prius does this, not me with my OEM EV button...
It would be a lot easier and cheaper to build an external charger and plug it in. But given the small battery size and limits of EV, even that isn't practical for a standard Prius. Tom
As hinted at above, it would be far less efficient than a direct charge of the battery itself. Best case would be via solar panels directly to a NiMH battery charger attached to the traction battery, next best case woule be a charger powered by a wall outlet. Doing it your way would be a distant worst case scenario. Simple physics - every time energy is converted some of it is lost. By the time electric arrives at your house it has already gone from chemical to thermal to mechanical to electrical, then there are line losses along the way before it reaches you. You are proposing to then convert it back to mechanical (rotational) so the MG1 motor can convert it back to electrical (adding in losses in the drivetrain before the conversion) and then back to chemical in the battery. One exception to your proposal is if you have access to rotational energy from a water wheel which is unlikely. Then you would be getting the input power free, but you would also still be putting a lot of extra wear on the drivetrain so in the end it wouldn't be free. As for adding engine block heaters to "increase" the MPG, wow. Those things use a ton of energy and much of it is lost right to the air. Nothing like increasing your total energy useage and pollution, a lot, to "save" a little bit of energy going down the road.
Hey, let's not drag physics into a discussion on ecomodding. You're going to make a lot of people angry!
The difficulty with charging the battery directly "apart from safety issues" is that the battery in normal use is only charged to 80% of capacity, this greatly extends it's service life. If you charge the battery from an external source and charge passed this point on a regular basis the longevity of the HV battery will be severely compromised.
Besides, the battery in a normal Prius is too small to make much difference even if you charge it to 100%. It's only equivalent to a few spoonfuls of gasoline. Tom
