Turn '08 Prius into a PHSEV

Turn Key solution available very soon from Hymotion - Tomorrow's Technology for Today's Vehicles
Posible tax credits, not sure.

 

ZAP is now selling their plug-in conversion.
ZAP Launches Sale of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Car, Tests Show up to 120 Miles per Gallon | ZAP Electric Cars

The price is starting $24,000, which means you can buy 8,000 gallons of gasoline ($3/gallon) and can drive 320,000 miles (40 mpg) using that cost of fuel.
I think their price is way expensive.

Ken@Japan

 

hymotion 9,995 dollar
i got the price today from them!
still way to high
5000 and lower wil be OK

 

Try Googling Cal-cars plug-in hybrid conversion. I have seen one of these installed using cheaper, commodity lead-acid batteries for about $5000 - $6000. If you need more information, I can put you in contact w/ the reseller that I know in my area, but I don't know if there is anyone near you that can / will install for you. Also, it is worth noting that even with an ev-mode kit, the prius will only travel at up to 34 MPH on electric-only. At these lower speeds, I have been told that the all electric range is still limited to only about 11 miles. IOW, the plug-in kit is meant to improve your gas-electric fuel economy and is not really intended to provide electric-only travel beyond the capabilities of a typical NEV or LSV.

 

If your budget is limited to around $5000 range, your choice is limited to use lead acid batteries.
However, the life of lead acid batteries is very short, and you'll see $0.3/mile or so of the battery life cost. I think it is not practical too.

My recommendation is wait for releasing of affordable plug-in/EV vehicles from Toyota, GM or other big car manufacturers in a few years.

Ken@Japan

 

There's also an open source place where they document how the DIY can do it. Seems like many people have done it.

Prius PHEV - EAA-PHEV

 

On the website spm2 linked there is a whole lot of good info about converting your prius to plugin. The open source project is the cal-cars PriusPlus. At the current time the recipe is getting pretty mature, and you should be able to get 10-15 miles EV range for ~$3-4k. Down side is PbA battery pack will probably only last a year or two before needing replacement at ~$1k. Probably not financialy compeling, but thats not why most of these early conversions are being done. If you have a little more budget avail, they are also working on a Nilar NimH version of this conversion.

On board solar is generally going to be far less significant than charging at home. You are lucky to be able to get enough solar on board to accumulate a few miles worth of EV in an entire day. The amount of current produced while driving is pretty much negligable. For the area available you'd be doing well to work in 200W (nominal). The capacity of your secondary pack will probably be around 3.6-4.8kWh. A typical midspeed cruise might be ~250Wh/mi, at the 240V of the secondary pack this ~1Ah/mi. Your 200W solar will put out less than 1A @ 240V, or less than 1 mi of cruising per hour of sunlight. That said I'd really like to have these too, but the bang for the buck is definitely charging at home. I guess if your commute exceeds your pack range and you can't charge at work you could make an argument for this, assuming you can park in full sun and keep it from impacting your aerodynamics. In this case it might actually be easier/cheaper to simply deploy a small (~2-3 m^2) solar charging station rather than trying to build it onto the car.

Ideally you'd match the DC voltages of your solar and secondary pack, but with a small number of panels/cells it will be hard to get enough voltage. You'd probably have to go to a dc:dc converter based conversion like the PiPrius but that adds significantly to cost and can actually decrease efficiency/range somewhat. You might be better off with a high efficiency AC inverter run off your portable solar array and just running your home charger off that.

Rob

 

As long as your expectations are realistic, I say go for it! You can use your 9ah Pba, but you will need twice as many of them. A standard pack uses 20x20aH. The trick is you need to get the voltage up over 240V so the HV controller will go into its recalibration mode and accept the extra charge coming in (SOC Drift). You also need a pretty sophisticated controller to watch everything and decide when to connect and disconnect the battery, as with 240V+ volts you will quickly overcharge the battery. There is a pretty narrow range of SOCs that will result in signifigant improvements in mileage, as the car will use more electricity to try and bring the SOC down.

All the info you need including a parts list, schematics, controller (not currently open source, though a cheaper but less sophisticated open source one with SOC spoofing is in the works) custom interface boards, and instructions are available here:
PriusPlus - EAA-PHEV
Like a lot of open source projects the documentation is not always 100%, and changes are always being made, so you'll want to be on the phev mailing list where most of the folks who are working on this hang out:
Maillist - EAA-PHEV

If I were you I would start by just following the instructions above and get your phev running, then start adding your own mods including solar. Its always easier to start with something you know works! Thats my basic plan. I'll do a straight cal-cars lead acid conversion, and then have a year or two to work on improvements before my pack needs replacing. There are a lot of new better battery technologies out there for example, but they are all much more complicated and require dedicated battery management computers. At this time these are not really available to the hobbyist (at least not on my budget), but the open source community is working on this too. I'd rather have my plug now while all that gets sorted out even if that means starting with old fashioned lead acid.

Rob

 

Along with Luscious Garage and pluginsupply I would like to make everyone aware that we can now move the Prius at 52 miles per hour with No Data Trouble codes in all electric mode. I call it " High Speed Stealth"
The cost is about 9500 dollars plus installation.
The car will go almost 14 miles before reverting to normal hybrid mode.
Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicle PHEV
Naturally a larger expensive battery is installed and an additional imbedded controller. There are other limitations as well.

I am editing a demo video for release april 1st ( no foolin!)

This is the same information available on the phev-eaa site.

 

I'm going to jump in with these guys and emphasize that this is not something to do unless you have money to throw away. The current state of battery technology makes adding your own fall into one of two categories: 1) Ineffective, or 2) Too expensive. If you have a lot of surplus cash and you want to make a statement, go ahead and do it. If want to do it because you think it makes economic and technical sense, then step back and take a few deep breaths. This is especially true with putting a solar panel on your Prius. That is a silly idea, and certainly not where you want to invest your solar dollar. Add more panels at home and charge from there. Unless you live on Mercury, you aren't going to get enough power to make it worth carrying the panel.

Tom

 

I would agree that there is no economic incentive to a PHEV conversion, however that assumes that you place no value on your reduced fuel consumption and emissions beyond the price of the gas you're not using. In a lot of ways you could make the same argument about a Prius. Many will probably never recoup the cost difference between a Prius and a small cheap car based only on gas savings. However for most of us there is inherant value to sending less of our money to foreign terrorist and oil company executives and/or pumping less junk into the air. For some that value is enough that we would consider a $5-$10k additional upgrade to our vehicles to cut that in half again. Particularly if doing so helps others realize such a thing is possible and start demanding such a product from the automakers.

I think it would be fair to say that there would be no corporate PHEV programs if it weren't for the efforts of the converters and their grass roots lobbying network. They have proven that the automakers were wrong when they said these cars couldn't be built by spending their own money to put them on the streets. I think we owe a similar debt of gratitude to the early adopters of the Prius and Insights, who took a big risk on a new technology and paid a big premium to support it. The rest of us may have never gotten the chance to own a Prius if they hadn't.

Rob

 

A PHEV does not mean always clean.
"Potential Impacts of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles on Regional Power Generation"
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v41_1_08/regional_phev_analysis.pdf

Ken@Japan

 

The Prius has other money saving factors. Read the current CR review that rates the Prius as the least expensive family car to own. Just looking at gas savings is silly. On the other hand, there are no economic savings with the proposed conversion, no matter how you look at it. If your motives are altruistic, take the money and install more panels on your house and forget the conversion. That way you offset your energy use where you get the best return. On the other hand, if you want to do the conversion because it will look cool and be a fun project, then have at it. Just don't delude yourself that it makes economic sense.

Tom

 

I need to spend more time reading this, but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. There seems to be a discrepancy here, as they seem to be comparing an all small car HEV fleet against a PHEV fleet of mixed vehicles including 20% full sized SUVs.

As summarized here:
http://www.pluginamerica.org/images/EmissionsSummary.pdf
The majority of researchers seem to indicate a substantial reduction in CO2 and most other emissions if PHEVs are adopted. There are exceptions of course, such as SOx which would have to be addressed.

I would agree, that a shift toward plugin vehicles must be met by equal pressure to continue cleaning up the grid and greater adoption of renewable energy sources. I would also argue that EV miles are so much cheaper than gasoline miles, that it would be no big deal to just pay the surcharge for green energy and substantially reduce all the related emissions:

Example:
The Prius is commonly estimated at ~250Wh/mile. Adding 85% charging efficiency, lets say AC consumption is 294Wh/mile. At the national average 9c/kWh that is only 2.6c per mile. A green energy surcharge of 1-3c per kWh would result in 2.9-3.5c per mile. Charging at night should cost less than half that. By comparison at the current average $3.28 per gallon, An average 22mpg vehicle costs 15c per mile to operate. A 50mpg Prius costs 6.5c per mile. So even with the green energy surcharge, the PHEV Prius would cost less than half as much to operate in electric mode and be nearly emissions free.

Rob

 

You are correct of course, CR has proven that rather well. I was speaking mostly of those who bought their Priuses pre-2006 or so, who paid big premiums, had to wait in line, and were taking a pretty big risk with a new technology.

I also agree there is little practical benefit to putting solar cells on a prius. On the other hand, if he can build it himself for <$1000 worth of second quality cells off ebay its not that big a loss. If it gets peoples attention and starts them thinking about things, maybe its even worth it.

Just for kicks, you can probably get ~1 m^2 of cells on a prius, which would get you up around 200W. Assuming 6 hours a day of good exposure, thats about 1.2kWh (~11c worth) of electricity a day, or just over 4 miles of EV. At the Priuses current 6.5c/mile on gasoline, thats about 26.5c worth of gas a day, or driven 7 days a week about $96.73 per year (assuming gas doesn't go up). At that rate the payback period on the cells (assuming $1000) will be just over 10 yrs. Not that much worse than on your house really

Rob

 

Adding solar panels to Prius

I already have one 15w which I use and saw
bigger ones at Checker Auto at $90, but after your comments it may be just wishfull thinking.

However, when and if the Korean Middle Schoolers 3D super efficiency panels hit the market that will be a different story. Now with just 2D cells as you say it won't cut the weight. I just remember seeing the solar car running in a race.

AWE, THE FUTURE OF SOLAR CARS HERE IN THE SUNNY HOT DESERT!