Toyota has plans to offer Prius 2010 Lithium battery upgrade ??

+1 to that. No car for 2 years. Bike commute 4.2mi each way was 20-30min without killing myself. VERY liberating. Buying the car was kind of depressing (even the Prius) but I can do more organized bike events now and take care of other errands. Haven't commuted in a month but plan to get back into it. Will save the car for snow days and really bad thunderstorms.

 

Or you could wait for the Toyota Jolt, the Toyota version of the Chevy Volt.

Toyota to co-produce Volt with GM - Renamed the Jolt | PriusChat

Hopefully Toyota goes through with such plans to get a leading edge on GM's own car by adding more appealing and unique features like the gen III Prius 1.8L beltless engine and solar roof. Now that would be exciting to see.

I've seen articles saying that Toyota will have a Lithium version of a plug-in Prius available on a lease-only basis to fleet customers by 2010, after that it's just a matter of time before it becomes available to the public (mabe 2~3 more years?). I'm sure in the next 2 or 3 years Hymotion and others will have conversions available for the gen III Prius as well.

However, all options above will come at a price. With GM anticipating pricing on the Volt at or above $40,000, Toyota estimating costs of the plug-in capable Lithium powered Prius at around $47,000 and Hymotion adding at least $10,000 to the price of a Prius. I think I'll keep waiting for now, unless I happen to stumble upon a small fortune.

 

I'll be that when there becomes a factory plug in from Toyota, it will be an entirely different animal then the current Prius. It may in fact be some kind of "compound" vehicle like the Volt. Don't know what to call the Volt as it isn't really a Hybrid as I understand the term.
Many years ago the Russians built a City bus that sounds a lot like the volt, it had a gen set running constantly with an electric motor that drove the bus and of course regen braking. As I understand it, the gen set charged either batteries or capacitors and between the regen braking and the constant charge of the gen set, the bus ran on less than 25 HP and actually ran on little fuel.
That was forty or so years ago, and of course trains have been electrically driven since WWII, so it's not really anything new, just the battery tech isn't there yet, maybe?

 

There are after-market companies that will modify your Prius for plug in for a thousand or so bucks or more. One here in San Diego. Saw another on TV in San Francisco.