Mild Plug in Convserion Gen 2 On the Cheap

Many moons ago when I had identical 04 Prius' (same package, tires, everything) I designed a 12V plugin conversion kit to test the mileage improvement of converting solely the 12v load to a 'plug in'. In other words, the 12V load is no longer powered by the traction battery. (That load is a constant 300 to 900 watts)

In my side by side testing I saw drastic differences in MPG especially for driving 50/50 hwy/city...I spent alot of time stopped at lights or waiting to pickup kids and watched the toll that idling took on MPG especially the recovery from 2 pink bars.

My question is, if I finally put together a production system for public consumption, would there be interest?

The gains (depending on season and driving type) were:

Measured as 2.5 to 4mpg for daytime spring highway driving up to 9mpg for nighttime winter/summer driving.

This works out to 5% to 20% improvement.

Retail pricepoint for the system would roughly be $200 to $400 and annual fuel savings @ 12k miles per year would be $100 to $200 per year.

If you compare the "cost to savings" ratio of this mild plugin vs a full fledged plug in conversion, you actually get more bang for your buck.

Just looking to see interest

 

For a simple explanation of why the mpg improvement is so drastic you have to understand that the 400 to 900 watt drain is normally supplied by the traction bat...The trac bat gets its energy from the ICE and since the ICE is only 30 to 40% efficient, and since it costs $3/gal thats not very effective way to power the standby load of the car.

So, with a mild conversion, your engine would never kick on to replenish the traction battery (except A/C) thus you are not using the inefficent ICE @ 3 bucks a gallon to power a huge system draw.

As far as the installation it takes less than an hour with basic tools.