Tour of the Sun by Plug-In Hybrid

very interesting article but hard to justify the cost since its still the estimated cost. however, the range would fill 90% of my driving needs.

for $5000 i would do it in a second

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA\";p=\"96591)</div>

This is exactly the kind of quote Toyota need to hear!

 

sure why not? still be cheaper than most mid size upscale car prices. at $26000 for a base model that gets about 100 miles on a charge. my daily work commute is 8 miles. it can easily all be done at 35 mph or less. (in fact, depending on the time of day, its just as quick to take surface streets. i work flexible hours)

on the battery boost at freeway speeds. tests show 90 mpg at 150 miles range. 150 miles would take car of 95% of my driving needs. in the nearly year ive had the car, ive exceeded that distance only 6 times.

realize that a successful rollout of these cars would produce power stations in major parking lots where you can plug in and flash a credit card and charge while you sit and effectively reduce gas consumption even more.

granted it will be a money making venture and another revenue stream for cities (i am guessing something on the line of say .50-$1 per KWH) to make up for the loss of gas taxes. this will provide a hidden benefit as it would have special parking spaces and to insure their use they would be smart to put them up front between the handicap and the "employee of the month" spaces. that would worth the price of admission especially in busy malls like SouthCenter in Tukila (can easily be a ¼ mile walk to the building)

then again... i digress. just a dream i suppose. would be nice. popularity of the car would lower the price as it would for any accepted consumer product. GM's treatment (YES!@! another reason to bash them) of their EV project will not help the reputation of the plug in hybrid. funny, GM finally seems to have a car that has nearly fanatical customer loyalty and they show their graditude for the loyalty by confiscating the cars and scraping them...

i better stop now... blood pressure is starting to boil. need to take a ride in my Prius to calm down.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(thorn\";p=\"96498)</div>

Its queit simple to understand. extract from my future diary.

23st Sept 2008. I just purchased my all new Prius 2008 all electric car. Great! Drove home. about 50 km. Nice a quiet. Performs well. Stayed at Jennies overnight. What could be a better day.

24th Sept 2008. Took a long detour on the way home. Any excuse to give the new car a go. did almoset 500km. Its normally only 10km. Couldnt resist it. Battery is still at 20%. Will have to find a place to charge the batteries.

25th Sept 2008. Drove to mums. Couldnt get into dads garaage as the old car wont move. power outlet was blocked by an old cupboard which was blocked by the car. Still about 5% charge left. Should be enough to get home.

26th Sept. Boy what a trip last night. Was down to 1% charge and all the console sut down. Was just left with the speed readout and in large red letter "recharge at once" notice. Covered it with a bit of paper to reduce panic. Got home hten realised there is no power in my garage. will try to sort out something tomorrow.

27th Sept 2008. Well, Im stuck. There is no power at all in the garage block. The power outlet is defective, and the owner removed the power some time ago and he said he has no intention of getting it reconnected. He also refused me permission to install the power myself. Had to push the car to the road and run an extension lead to my flat. The police came along and told me to get rid of the cable as its a danger to pedestrians. Wth! got car towed to dealer and they are recharging it.

28th Sept 2008. Collected car from dealer. Fully charged. He said he can not provide charging facilities long term.

10th oct 2008. Ive been unable to use the car for the last week as the batteries are discharged again. Car is for sale.




I should add that of all the places I have lived only 3 have had power in the garage. 2 were my at my parents house, one was my own. without exception, all the places where I have rented have had no power. Things may be different in the USA.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(victor\";p=\"96693)</div>

You should try my future diary...

23st Sept 2008. Just bought the non ICE Prius. I drove about 150 miles silently and boy was that cool. I'm thinking though of getting the gas engine sound option. I'd hate to hit someone who couldn't hear me. I'll check PriusChat to see if it's worth it.

I need to get a longer cord, or make sure I get home before my wife every night.

24th Sept 2008. Doubled the electric cord. But it's ugly to leave that cord out all day. I think I'll look into the "AutoPlug".

26th Sept. I found an "AutoPlug" dealer on ebay. Since I don't have a garage, I have to spring for the all weather version. $800 is s good price though.

27th Sept 2008. Wife yelled at me for leaving the orange power cord in the yard all day. She worries that Bob next door might start stealing KWh.

1st Oct 2008. "AutoPlug" arrived. Need to call electrician to install it.

3rd Oct 2008. "AutoPlug" installed. Had the power cord buried. It cost me $1400. Now I have my own spot. It's cool the way it works. Now I only have to park the car "sorta" near the plug. The lasar then finds the plug spot on the car and feeds a line into it. Hit the remote connect on my FOB and go in the house. That lasar plugs in the car itself. No more gas stations!!!!! No more plugging it in!!! Boy I love this car!!! (If I had a garage, I could've done it myself for $500. Oh well.)

16th Oct Boy do I miss stopping for gas!!!

25th Oct My boss is thinking of installing an "AutoPlug" in the employee lot.

1st Dec 2008. The Emerald Square Mall just installed 20 "AutoPlugs". Maybe I'll start shopping there again.

3rd Feb 2009. My boss is getting a solar roof for the employee parking lot. Not only will our cars now get hit by less sun, that sun will be powering 35 "AutoPlugs". He figures he will start to make a profit on the electricity he sells us in 4 years. Should help keep my car pretty too.

5th March 2009 I heard the price of gas is dropping to $3.99 per gallon. It may have to do with the upsurge in all the non ICE cars being sold. I need to tell my next door neighbor with the old Hummer "You're welcome".

12th March 2009 What's a gas station? I haven't thought about gassing/juicing up my car in 5 months!!!

14th August 2009. I'm driving to Florida next week. This is going to be a pain. There are now plenty of battery changing stations along the interstate, but I've got the battery that takes 20 minutes to change. I'll go check ebay for that new battery change device that can allow your battery to be removed from the car in 2 minutes.

17th. August 2009. Found out today that I can sell my Prius for 3G more than I paid for it. Boy is the surge in non ICE cars going strong!! I then called my dealer and he can get me a Prius with the speed battery changer for only 2G more than that. So now I'm getting a brand new Prius again, just in time for my trip to Florida!!!! Boy do I love this car!!!



(No new coal fired nor nuclear fired electric power plants were required in the creation of my fantasy diary above. It's my fantasy so I can make it so.)

 

Ah, yes, the old plug-in problem!

Here too in the UK, most people park on the street, sometimes a long way from our houses, so we wouldn't be allowed to leave cables stretched out from our houses - health and safety and all that!

With a plug-in hybrid, however, it's not a problem. You just put some gas in the tank and off you go. Battery's low? Use gas. Gas low? Use battery.

But suppose it's not a hybrid, suppose it's only an EV without any gasoline backup. Where then would all the people without garages plug in their EV only cars?

By 2008, the recently announced Toshiba automotive LiIon batteries should be well established and on sale. These recharge to 80% in 1 minute (!), full charge in only 6 minutes.

So what do you do when you need to fill up your EV? Take a trip to the nearest "gas" (electric) station, and fill up just as quickly as the people sticking gasoline in their primitive 19th century tech cars. Stuck by the road-side and out of charge? Breakdown trucks will carry the same (but bigger) batteries so they can give you a top-up charge in under a minute with a token 50 miles or so - enough to get you to the nearest charging station.

Of course, BP and Shell et al will likely try to "charge" a fairly hefty amount for kilowatt-hours bought from their electric station forecourts, so the supermarkets will likely put chargers in their parking lots to let you charge your EV at a reduced rate while you shop. Do that somewhere once a week and it doesn't matter where you park at night.


PS By the way Victor, LOVE the way you brought up that point! We need more of this sort of thing on Priuschat!

 

I think there are some misunderstandings here. The car runs just like a normal Prius, and the larger battery recharges from regenerative braking or from the engine to maintain the state of charge (in range of 20-80% rather than 40-60% in stock Prius). So you still have unlimited range as long as you have access to gasoline. The idea is that you plug in mostly at home: no hunting for "charging stations" -- then the next morning, your first 60 miles are 50% electric/50% gasoline (or your first 30 miles at low speeds are 100% electric). For the 30% or so of people who don't have garages, we'll need other solutions--for instance, in the SF Bay Area, BART could "electrify" their parking lots. We've heard from the owner of an apartment building who would like to offer 120-volt plugging in as a garage amenity to attract tenants. Read more at URLs below. On the cost issue, the whole point is to get Toyota and other auto makers to build them. We estimate it would add $2-$3000 to the price of a mass-production car to add the larger battery to an existing hybrid.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(felixkramer\";p=\"96721)</div>

No. no misunderstanding. I was quuoting a part of the original article. My point, which I guess you didnt understand, is there there are a large number of people who dont have access to powe for recharging an electric only car. I live in rented accomodation in Germany. There is no power in the garage, and I cant dig up 200 meters of road to install any. At work, we have a large open air carpark queit a distance from buildings (security concerns) so again no power. For my normal home to duty drive, only a few km, and electric only car would be ideal, but I have nowhere to recharge. Hence getting the Prius.

With the house we own on Crete, we have no garage (not normal there to have one) and again its not possible to put a power cord to a car from the house.

btw Felix, I would love to see MRT take up the Prius + idea and give us a usable electric only mode. I could imagine driving to and from work for 1 week on electric only and recharging the batteries on longer trips from time to time on the autobahn when I go into Munich.

 

ok this is getting very very entertaining.

lets look at my diary.

sept 23, 2008.
just brought my new Prius with extended battery range home. because i had to take the freeway and most occupants of the freeway have issues if i drove the 34 mph that the battery is capable of, i sped up to 60 mph and used just under a 1/10th of a gallon of gas.

 

Embedding high efficiency photovoltaic (PV) panels into the roof and rear window, with additional panels on the rear interior "deck" and dashboard would go a long way toward making a plug-in Prius even better. PV panels are an added benefit in cold climates, not just warm sunny climates.

 

I did the math and correct me if I'm wrong but for the first 90 miles the car got 123 MPG. For the next 30 miles, the car got 31 MPG and for the final 30 miles, the car got 50 MPG.

Driven for around 500 miles, my car would get better mileage than theirs.

Hmmmm.....veddy eentedesting.

 

Sorry Ray, those maths are wrong! The numbers given in the article (if true) suggest:

0-90 miles used 0.73 gallons for 123 mpg average.
90-120 miles used 0.47 gallons for 64mpg over that stretch.
120-150 miles used 0.47 gallons for 64mpg over that stretch also.

Total gallons therefore used = 1.67. 150 miles divided by 1.67 = the 90 mpg average they claim.

Seems to confirm their assertion that after the 60 mile assist range, it goes back to driving pretty much like a normal Prius.

 

Yep- I had a brain fart in my logic.

 

Has anyone seriously heard of PV accessories for a Prius? My wife and I alternate using the Prius (she gets the Northern Virginia Interstate 66 HOV exception into DC until mid 2006), but both of us leave the car exposed to the sun for 8-10 hours/day at work.

I'm anxiously awaiting the battery conversion being commercially available ... might be worthy of a road trip to CA for the install.

So here's my future diary (ok so it's a little depressing for my gas guzzling minivan):

Feb 2008: Heating Oil is again in short supply. Crude has surpased the $100 a barrel mark, with sweet crude even higher. This summer analyst expect US gas prices to top $5.00/gallon.

May 2008: Well the analysts were right. Cheapest gas in the area is now $5.29/gal. Toyota announced a Sport Prius integrating their Extended Battery System (EBS). Electric only for hard acceleration up to 45 mph. 0-60 in a respectable 5.8 seconds. EPA puts mileage under normal city driving conditions at 65 mpg.