Plug in conversions? What's the latest?

[Bob Allen]

Anyone know what is the present state of / availability of "plug in conversions" for Prii? The guys in California will do it for about 10,000 bucks, but is the price coming down and/or is it worth considering. Maybe better to wait until car makers produce plug-in hybrids rather than consider converting a Prius.

[natureboy9]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Angel Flight Pilot @ Apr 20 2007, 03:57 PM) [snapback]426978[/snapback]</div>

Anyone know what is the present state of / availability of "plug in conversions" for Prii? The guys in California will do it for about 10,000 bucks, but is the price coming down and/or is it worth considering. Maybe better to wait until car makers produce plug-in hybrids rather than consider converting a Prius.
[/b]

I am curious about not only this but a DIY plug-in conversion that would charge the existing batteries so that you could avoid the short trip low mpg. I think that without adding more batteries you could keep weight down, increase short term and life-long efficiency and decrease cost of conversion making it more appealing to a wider audience.

[daniel]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(natureboy9 @ May 25 2007, 01:39 PM) [snapback]450038[/snapback]</div>

I am curious about not only this but a DIY plug-in conversion that would charge the existing batteries so that you could avoid the short trip low mpg. I think that without adding more batteries you could keep weight down, increase short term and life-long efficiency and decrease cost of conversion making it more appealing to a wider audience.
[/b]

The existing batteries, fully charged, will get you about one and a half miles of electric range. Two miles at best under ideal driving conditions. It's just not worth it. Ten or fifteen thousand dollars so that you could drive one or two miles on grid power? For ten grand you could buy a base model Xebra that goes 15 miles on a charge, and by adding batteries you can get 40 miles.

[tripp]

Bob,

Not exactly what you're looking for, but it's a recent development in Li battery tech worth 3 minutes of your time (I hope).

The gist is a company has produced a 7 kWh battery pack and installed it in a prius. They intend to sell it as PHEV mod. No word here on price (though there may be info on that some where). I've read elsewhere that this particular battery can be deep cycled 2-3K times. It looks promising. And it's not A123 or Altarinano, its Lithium Technology Corporation (beauty name, eh?) so there's yet another company out there doing this sort work, which is good. Enjoy.

Full Article

Daniel, I don't think he was saying anything about spending $10-15K on a DIY mod for the existing NiMH battery. The problem is that you'd have to hack the Battery Management ECU or it would be unhappy. Also, you'd have to be careful about jimmying too much with the SOC or you could degrade the battery by pushing the SOC up over 80% too often. Toyota went to great lengths to carefully manage the battery. Interfering with that management would probably be a bad thing, esp for such little benefit.