PRIUS+ flyer/windshield handout is now available

We're getting closer in lots of ways to pulling together all the components of the PRIUS+ campaign.

The following flyer is aimed specifically at 2004 Prius owners, secondarily at those who might be "patrons" (as people have been patrons of musicians and artists) of the PRIUS+ campaign.

We encourage you to download the PDF version from http://www.calcars.org/priusplusflyer.pdf and print out a few. Post them at any logical public place or leave a few at a likely event.

And for the best targeting, if you put a few in your car, and you don't feel awkward about doing it, tuck one under the windshield wiper of any parked '04 Prius you see.

Thanks (comments and suggestions welcome, of course)
Felix

Love Your 2004 Prius?
How Would You Like to "Green-Tune" It?

The California Cars Initiative (CalCars), a nonprofit group of environmentalists, engineers, entrepreneurs and other volunteers, is actively recruiting Prius owners and their cars to create PRIUS+.

If you own an '04 Prius, you know how great your car is. We hope you'll consider joining a unique effort to soup it up.

Together, we can help bring to market an even more efficient, cleaner car that can be the transitional vehicle for the next decade or longer. Here's what PRIUS+ will do:

* Enable your "EV-only" mode (that blank switch to the left of your steering wheel -- it works in Asia and Europe);
* Add batteries, in that convenient space hidden under the hatchback;
* Plug it in: at your option (when it's easy), recharge at night at a 110-volt outlet.

Result? Short trips at local-street speed in "stealth" (all-electric) mode. You'll live a greener life, gas up less often and help the auto industry address energy security and global warming.

Join a select network of affluent early adapters; be the "first on your block" to own a next-generation car that relies entirely on existing, proven technology.

Maybe you can't afford about $10,000.
Or maybe you don't own a Prius.
Or you'd rather wait until we convince Toyota to offer this option on more powerful hybrids, e.g. Lexus RX and Highlander SUVs -- or Ford on their Escape hybrid. (They'll do it much better and more cheaply than we can!)

But if you still like the idea of being present at the creation of a clean, cool car, please help connect us with:
* Prius owners who can be afford to be early adopters;
* Influencers at companies and institutions;
* Patrons to sponsor our startup and development costs (tax-deductible).

Find out more at
http://www.priusplus.org, or at
http://www.calcars.org, see Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Plug-In Hybrids,
or contact CalCars:
Felix Kramer, Founder, [email protected], 650.520.5555.
(a printable flyer version of this message is at http://www.calcars.org/priusplusflyer.pdf)

 

We're aiming to do a professional job, sufficiently well done so we can convince high-profile celebs and entrepreneurs to pay for these cars.

We're actually conservatively estimating the cost at $10-$20K: depending on whether we do a dozen or several dozen, we will allocate the costs over all the vehicles. We'd love it to be cheaper, and we'll be the first to say so if we find some ways to cut costs--it will make our campaign much easier.

First, we have battery costs, which we see as $5-$10K. I'd be interested in any better estimates of the cost of NiMh or different kinds of Lithium batteries to add at least 300% more capacity of EV-style deep discharge batteries (not hybrid batteries). See the ongoing discussions on these subjects at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gridable-hybrids and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Prius_Technical_Stuff

Second, we have the development and integration costs. Some of this will be volunteers, some will be from a professional integration firm that will stand behind its work.

Even the volunteers will require travel etc. compensation to bring them together for part of the project.

We're also planning as part of the project to bring the first vehicles around to presentations around the state of California to persuade public and private fleet buyers and others to support our effort to prove the market for these vehicles.

You might also look at the links at http://www.calcars.org/priusplusdetails.html where the South Coast Air Quality Management District is planning to spend over $5M to convert 3 dozen Priuses to be hydrogen internal combustion hybrids-- well over $100K/vehicle.

 

* This is in now way a commercial venture: CalCars is nonprofit (so far entirely we're all- volunteer, we've raised a small amount from individual "Charter Sponsors" and are hoping to find a "patron" from a high-wealth individual (entrepreneur or celebrity as well as foundation support.
Our goal is to create the awareness and market conditions that will lead car companies (OEMs--original equipment manufacturers) to build plug-in hybrids.

In the comments that follow, I'm resolutely staying away from any technical details, deferring to people who are doing the work and therefore know what they're talking about).

* Concerning battery weight: the experimenters who are reporting their results at the Yahoo technical and gridable groups I cite above are continuing to make good progress. We can hope to hear more soon. They seem to be coming up with some mainly NiMh solutions where the weight of added batteries is not so high as to nullify the benefit.
I hear a lot of talk about ultracapacitors, and, of course, about Lithium solutions, but it doesn't sound to me like either is going to be as practical/affordable near-term. Of course, we'd love to be proven wrong on that, and welcome any additional information.

* We have no plans to start messing with Toyota's algorithms. We prefer to treat the battery and engine control units as "black boxes" and have them see more power available to them from the battery they currently draw on. Of course, this means we can't optimize for different battery and state-of-charge characteristics, which means we won't get as good performance. But we'd rather Toyota handle that piece and do it right, once we've persuaded them there's enough reason to do it.

 

Warranty: that's going to be up to Toyota. The hybrid system (including batttery) warranty and the overall car warranty are probably separable.

I don't think they'll go after a few people who enable their EV buttons, or after high-profile PRIUS+ sponsors. But we're fully disclosing in all lengthy discussions of what we're offering and asking that people have to be willing to risk voiding their warranties. That's another reason we expect PRIUS+ sponsors to be people who bought the car because they thought it was the best, greenest car, who could afford the potential financial exposure.

On a related note: NiMh batteries have proven to be far more durable than expected. The RAV4E's EV-95s were "rated for 75,000 miles (and that assumption led the California Air Resources Board to project that they'd have to be replaced at least once during the car's life). But Southern California Edison has a fleet with many cars in the 150-180,000 range and no signs of problems. That experience led to a very useful "recalculation" document by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) showing that lifetime total cost of ownership of PHEVs will be lower than conventional cars or non-plug-in hybrids: for report, see link at section 5 of http://www.calcars.org/resources.html

 

We don't want to wait until the warranty period is over, because our goal is to influence the production decisions of Toyota and other car makers. There's a huge opportunity right now, especially in California, with all the talk of a Hydrogen Highway, and the beginning of a substantial number of people questioning that strategy (for info on what I consider the misdirected effort in Southern CA to convert 3 dozen Priuses to hydrogen-electric hybrids, see the end of the page at http://www.calcars.org/priusplusdetails.html).

In fact, some months from now (regardless of how much progress we make with Prius conversion), it's very possible that our conversion efforts will also include Highlander, perhaps even Escape....