Prius as a Generator Revisited

I'm going to agree with you. I lose power at my place frequently in the winter and I've got a 2000 watt MSW with heavy aligator clips. Power fails and I clip it to my truck battery and it's great for running lights, laptop, TV. I've been doing it for probably 20 years with no harm to my electronics.
I've got only one downside. The need to fire up the truck once every few hours to keep the battery up. A remote start is nice but I still have to be awake to do it. Wouldn't a Prius be PERFECT for this as it starts when the battery is low and then shuts off? I'm of course not talking about clipping it to the HV battery, just the 12V that's easy to get to with a nice flat cargo area for the inverter. I plan on trying this myself when the power fails next.

I'v only had this car a few weeks and it's my first hybrid so I'm still learning about it. Can it be left on "running" so to speak indefinitely so that the ICE kicks on and off to charge? Or, will it "time out" and turn itself off after not being put into drive after a certain amount of time? Not trying to hijack the thread, just curious!

 

It will start the engine and charge the hybrid battery every so often. The hybrid battery will continuously supply up to 100A to the 12v system through the solid state converter- it's what a Prius has instead of an alternator. The car will use some of that for itself, and the rest of it is fair game for your 12v inverter.

That <100A converter ceiling and the small size of the 12v battery are the functional limits on the system- but plenty of people have had no trouble hooking up 1000W inverters and... not loading them all the way up.

But yeah it works great overall until the tank runs dry.