New aftermarket lithium ion pack, by Dr Prius.

I’m not certain about an increase in fuel efficiency, but to me less resistance means less heat and hence better efficiency, but I have no empirical data to give you, just passing on what I was sold. So it makes sense that it could be a gimmick. I’m adjusting my statement to things I do know, or believe I understand to be true.

 

There is no magic.
ALL of the energy used to power the car ultimately comes from the gas engine.
Having the engine run a bit longer or harder to put more energy into the battery is NOT an increase in efficiency.

 

I agree. If you for some reason decide to add a resistor to the wire input (in series) of the battery you will effectively lose some energy in the form of heat through the resistor. It does not matter if that resistance is now “moved into” the battery itself because the NiMH chemistry is less efficient/has a higher resistance. (Whether NiMH has higher resistance than Li, that is the question)....

 

I'd really like to know the results of the tests because it's the first I've heard of the Lithium pack.
Will check out the linked thread.
A lot depends on what the Prius system is looking at and looking for. If the code is looking at voltage figures all is good, if it's looking at pack resistance and a mapped charge/discharge curve then it could get messy. But it would seem the Dr Prius batt works, so we can scrub out some weird code malarky and that's GREAT!

I mean, if we put a similarly sized bank of Li-Ion cells in place of the NiMH pack and it turned out to give a range of say 15 miles on EV only, it'd be much more useful for fully EV town driving. Get home, plug it into a wall socket (with decent charge controller) and a regular 3rd Gen such as mine becomes fashionable
Add a decent hub motor for powering up to 43mph and Robert is your Dad's brother.

 

No fair plugging it in.
That turns it into a PIP or a Prime.
Whole different story.

 

Get to work, park in the sun and let the sola r panel soak in the sunlight and bob is your uncles fathers ex step brother in laws cousin.

 

Had the pack for 2 months. Been driving in hot/humid weather and been keeping the interior temps around 75 degrees. Battery handled a couple of hard pulls.