NPR - Plugin Hybrids story today

Again, these "mileage" figures keep NOT taking into account the
fuel burned somewhere else to push the plug-in charge into the
pack. It's not free energy, for the umpteenth time...
.
_H*

 

Not free but grossly cheaper than gasoline.

 

and a lot cleaner

 

If you guys want Toyota's attention, visit here http://toyota.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/toyota....Q9ZXY*&p_srch=1
Send Toyota emails telling them YOU WANT A PLUG-IN PRIUS!

 

The whole point is for us to engage in sparring practice here, to shake out details and well thought out responses for when confrontations in the wild occur. We are less than 1/10th of 1% of the Prius owners in the United States... yet our influence has proven to be dramatically more than that.

The biggest problem has always been patience. I knew it would take a very long time for certain things to happen. So I taught myself ways of dealing with the wait. My "Prius for Dummies" book is finally complete now. That took over 4 years to accomplish. From that very first draft of the User-Guide to the document detailing the PSD was quite a span of research & revisions. But it well worth it. There is quite a collection of illustrated materials available to those wanting to know more about Prius... now.

Not being able to take advantage of design in Prius yet is frustrating. But the wait for a less expensive method is well worth it. The pioneers will hopefully prove its worth in the meantime, hence the push to get the data gathering started. Without them providing an opportunity for us to observe their progress, how are we going to endorse their results? Testing takes time... and a whole lot of cheerleading along the way. But once they get there, a strong following would have hopefully emerged to help with that next stage of rollout.

 

How would the availability of an E-85 or bio-diesel Prius Hybrid affect this conversation?

 

Would it plug in?

Nate

 

Now, just a minute here! I don't see that paying nothing is an option. One would have to pay for the electricity to charge the battery; and one has to consider how much pollution is involved in generation of the electricity (though with nuclear power, that would be next-to-nothing).

What are the numbers on cost of getting your power out of the electrical tap vs. out of the gas pump?

 

there are some of us who would benefit greatly... and yes electricity does cost something. but if taken during off peak, even in CA where the rates are sky high, its estimated to be about 70 cents a gallon at peak rates

now if you live where i live (we SELL power to CA and we make a BUNDLE on it)your cost is a ¼ of that. so it aint free, but when was the last time you could buy something significant for less than a quarter?

 

I think that a plug in version is a great option, but the production of electicity does produce pollution whether coal-fired or nuclear power plants. The difference between the two is that coal pollutes today causing carbon emissions and global warming, acid rain, etc. and nuclear power's pollution does not affect us in the present but our future (really our children and their children's children) since the waste takes so long to breakdown. We currently do not have a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste, and I wouldn't count on us figuring one out.

With that said, there should be two movements here. One is for a plug in hybrid and the other is for clean alternative sources of energy (ie. wind and solar). I think the second step logically follows the first for people on this board. Why not produce clean energy at your house with solar panels or a small wind turbine and not pay the electric company. We should also fight for power companies to switch to clean alternative sources of energy, but that is a different topic for a different thread.....

The other idea is that maybe people could collaborate and pool money to get the 12k for the conversion on a few cars so we can start collecting data.

 

There are 11,830 registered members on Prius chat. If everyone pitches in $1 we could raise $11,830 which would pay for the mod.

We do that several times and then were set to test.

I will volunteer to be one of the testers

 

Good idea... I'll volunteer to be another

Now seriously... I think I'd want John, DanTheMan and Evan and others to get the data daily... and a group of knowledgeables to first design and then to adjust data collection and analysis techniques as the initial findings come in...

The idea is an uplink capable Prius--easily feasible via eflier's CANview and a wireless internet capable PDA phone and shared server space...

It's a data analyst's dream and heaven... think of a model geared after SETI@Home run from Berkeley.

Just a thought,

S.

PS The jury is still out there on how clean our electrc energy is now, and how much we still need to do on fixing that first, short of renewable at the consumer side directly--wouldn't that sound much better to beging with?

 

there maybe 11,000 registered members but currently there is probably only about 3-400 that are active


*EDIT*

ok make that 417 members who have posted since Feb 1... now add in lurkers and still doesnt add up

 

We might not even have to do that!

Like I said earlier, there are going to be a lot of E-Drive PHEV Priuses about on the roads soon. All we have to do is convince one of the guinea-pigs to join Priuschat, and they'll prob be more than willing to tell us all the info!

Now we just need a team of "spotters" and a team of "stoppers" half a mile down to road to flag them down!

 

plus i dont think it will cost that much. many feel that after the initial rollout, the mod can be mass produced in the $4-5,000 range. imm, it would have to be that range to get widespread acceptance anyways.

 

Fine. Have people donate $5 instead. I'm willing to donate at least that much for the information to be gained from this.

 

the information is already available, i wish there was somewhere where we could actually access specific data instead of a synopsis of the results