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Modified Prius gets up to 180 Miles Per Gallon
shupp writes "The NY Times (free reg. required) reports in that some folks are not content with the no-plug-in rule that both Honda and Toyota endorse. By modifying a Prius so that it can be plugged in, Ron Gremban of CalCars states 'I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon'. The article also reports that 'EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 mpg, and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power.'"
More importantly, why has Honda/Toyota decided not to adopt these as factory options?
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
I'm not trying to bash what these guys have done - but isn't plugging it in and then looking at MPG very decieving?
On the other hand, it would be interesting to see how the $/mile stack up to see whether or not a plugged in prius can be more efficient in terms of cost.
Well, okay, "free" in the sense that I've already paid for the solar setup -- but with oil prices rising, I suspect charging a car from my solar cells would make them pay for themselves a couple years ahead of schedule.
At approximately 112000 BTU/gallon of gasoline that's about 33kWh/gal. In California where the prices are about $0.12/kWh electric, it costs you about $4.00/gallon saved. With gas prices at about $2.40 in CA that's about $1.60 extra per gallon saved.
For those of you who say "fuel savings at any cost" consider that most of the california electricity is generated by burning natural gas, and that there are considerable losses involved in generating and transmitting the electricity.
Nothing to see here at the moment. Wait until the price of gas goes to $5.00 and then buy some solar panels to charge your car (or at least net-meter your electricity).
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
And your grid electricity consumption goes way, way up.
Tradeoffs.
I saw a French research company that is making cars run off of compressed air. Using a Carbon-fibre based compressed air canister, the PSI in the tank is about around 3500 or 3800. There is enough air in the tank to drive about 130 to 180 km @ 60 KM/H.
This is really interesting. The technology is out now. And, AFAIK, this form of transportation is emmissionless.
Just as a curiosity, though, why type of hybrid technologies do we have for *airplanes*. Our economy relies so heavily on planes that we need to find alternatives. IANA-Engineer, but I doubt a 747 would run on solar.
The book "The Bottomless Well" noted that if you get batteries good enough, meaning light enough and small enough volume, able to travel for a normal day's travel (say 250 miles) & inexpensive enough, to fit in a car that you can potentially drop your cost per mile for power to 10% of that using gasoline today.
How? Off peak power now at night (when stationary power plants would love to sell you power) is $.03-$.04 per KWHr, versus about $.40/kwhr for gasoline.
Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALTI) received 2 patents on a way to make Li-ion batteries that charge in minutes and hold 3 times the charge in January 2005, and Fujitsu just announced they will start shipping batteries probably licensed under this patent in 2006.
All-electric cars are FAR FAR closer to practicality than people think because of these dramatic technology breaththroughs.
I find this "hacking" of the Prius really exciting, and a good protent for the future. If anything, toyota should spin this into a sales pitch:
"Buy a Prius and get 60mpg right out of the gate. But if you would like to save even more on gas, get the Prius Extension Kit for $49.95 and draw electricity form your home to your Prius, doubling the car's mileage."
"But wait - there's MORE! with the Prius Pro Developers Kit, you can swap out the batteries for other even more powerful batteries, and not just doubling your mileage, but TRIPLLING your mileage!"
"Why WAIT? Call Now! Operators Are Standing By!"
Seriously: just like ever punk ass kid can dope up his Honda Civic lifback into a firebreathing psych machine, you should be able to totally juice the crap out of a Prius.
this is the kind of technology that was envisioned years ago by the Rocky Mountian Institute's notions of a hypercar.
I want one of those...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
A lot of the old pure-battery cars were marred by the fact that you couldn't go very far on them.
The hybrid concept is great, but I imagine manufacturers wanted to distance it from the pure-electric cars. A lot of people would have assumed that if a car had a power cord, it would have the same problems as the pure-electric systems.
So instead, you expose people to gasoline-only cars with relatively high gas-milages. Later on, once people have accepted that these new things work well enough, you can add a power cord. And even market it as "New and Improved!"
Basically, you don't want the public to assume that the power cord limits where you can go with it.
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This is the same argument I use with my current car - a TDI (Turbo-Direct-Injection) Dieel Jetta.
... in 1 month. At that rate, I'll have paid off the difference in 14.3 months.
It costs about $1,800 more to get the Diesel. I've started keeping track of my KM travelled and how much it costs vs. a gasoline car and so far I've saved myself $126.42 with my diesel
But, even better and more important to me is that I'm using less fuel, and using less fuel more efficiently, which is producing less pollutants and emissions. Not to mention the fact that making diesel uses less energy (less refining needed) than gasoline.
So, even though it costs more money to buy a diesel, I was willing (And continue to be willing) to pay a little more to make a little less pollution.
Reading life after the oil crash really helped change my mentality about fuel and energy use. Shifting my energy use to more electricity and less fossil fuels means that, while I'm still using energy, I'm using a cleaner source of it. A lot of the power in SW Ontario comes from either Hydroelectricty or Nuclear power which is considerably cleaner than burning fossil fuels.
I guess it all comes down to how much you'd change your lifestyle to help cut back on energy use, and how much of your own money you'd spend to do it.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
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