I install solar panels for a living so when I bought my Prius C I made a 1 amp PV system for my car. I used small solar cells and bent them to contour to the shape of my roof with a collection area of 4.5sf. All of my additions weighs 23 lbs and cost me about 700 dollars in parts plus tons o labor. When I enter my car my battery is always full and I am averaging 59 mpg throughout my vehicles lifetime, with a max on a tank of gas at 78mpg. I wish I could go further and faster on battery alone but so far I have no idea how to make that happen. I love that I can be in EV mode while parking. I hate that I cant drive ANYWHERE in EV mode. Dose anyone have any ideas how to change the EV mode on my car or upgrade my battery capacity. Also I want to put a bike rack on my car what is the best option roof mount or a trailer hitch receiver style I am debating that. Thanks PS please note this is just a project for myself and I do not want to create any systems for anyone it is far to large of a headache but if Toyota wants to include my design on the next gen Prius I would be honored. That would be worth quitting my job for.
there is a thread here about someone putting a pis kit in thier c. try a search. not sure if they finished it yet.
There is a thread about that but I created a thread about my experiences and my questions. Our PV projects are not similar and I feel that having both threads are useful. My system is functional and in service but complete no.
Sure I will give a pic soon. Specs are 4.5sqft of collection area with an 1 amp max charge rate. My system weighs 23 lbs. I do not have any data logging. My power control system is a arduino box that I merged to a multimeter with a simple program that I created. The maxim voltage that I have achieved is ~72. This is project not production so I can not provide a spec sheet. I am tinkerer not a company.
thanks, i mentioned the pis thread because you asked if anyone knew of a way to upgrade battery capacity.
I've not seen the setup here, but i'm guessing: During driving the solar panels essentially do nothing. They just trickle charge the battery when the car is parked, like for a top off... and 1 amp charges an iphone (5v usb), but the guy said he's had a max of 72volts, it will should charge up the battery slowly.
Yes it is, if it is 1 amp at 73 volts. That works out to 73 Watts. and that works out to just about exactly 1/10th of a horse power. The trouble with extending the size of the battery is that even if the size were doubled you still could not drive very far or very fast in EV mode. And doubling the battery would take up the entire rear seat. It would be easy to do. Simply buy a second Prius C battery and wire it in parallel with the existing one. The trouble is you spend well over a $1,000+ and give up all the storage and or the entire rear seat and STILL you don't have a practical EV mode. Now we see why the plug-in cars cost $40K to build. The entire car is filled with batteries that cost about $10K at wholesale prices. I do know some one who is building a real EV. He is starting with a used small size pickup truck. Then he loads plain old lead acid marine batteries in the front half of the truck bed. He has about 1,000 pounds of batteries in there. One more idea. Back to how best to use these 73W of rooftop PV panel. I think (1) charge the battery if it is low then (2) if the battery is charged divert the power to an engine block heater. The Prius C uses a lot of gas simply to heat the engine in the first few minutes of driving. The block heater will pre-heat the engine. The other use of 73W is to pre-heat or cool the interior so you do not waste power doing that in the first mile
I believe the batterys are never fully charged and of coarse discharged which is how the battery life is so good. I would go with the bike rack on the rear. Much less drag.
Ever so often people come on here and make claims like this. I think this is a troll. He started posting on Dec. 2nd and finished posting on Dec 2nd. He claims to have a picture but won't or hasn't shown it. Here are some things for all reading to consider. 1) Keep your guard up. People know this is the website to find people serious about increasing mpg's and they also know money won't be too much of an objection (most Prius owners aren't poor and are willing to pay for increasing mpg (even if there is no ROI)) 2) The Pruis (any Prius minus Plug In) is designed as a gasoline (primary) car with electric assist. The motors/mg's are not designed for EV only use but are meant to merely supplment the efficient but low powered atkinson cycle engine. No amount of battery modifications will change this. 3) The reason the Prius has a "small" battery is b/c that's all it needs to allow the mg's to supplement the ICE. Once up to speed (above 42), the ICE now has the power necessary to keep it there and recharge the battery to allow for the next cycle of stop and go. The Prius and Toyota's HSD is an engineering marvel that is ingeniously simple. Perfecting it has taken years but, like anything else, it has its limitations. I assure you that if Toyota could just add a larger battery or solar panels and gain a competitive advantage, they would do it. Think about it, what company wouldn't?
Agreed. My car comes with a solar panel on the roof yet Toyota figured it wasn't worth the effort to wire it to the battery.
