UK Prius PHV Fleet Ready for Deployment

Bob, I rudely didn't fully look into the Enginer Kit after your last post and probably dismissed it prematurely. I also didn't think they'd offer a service in the UK and the thought of ordering parts from the US for such a product filled me with dread.

Have been reading up on the kit since and find that it is offered here in the UK (by only one supplier that I can see) with various options starting with a 2kwh kit at £1,695 plus £400 fitting and a 4kwh kit at £2,695 plus fitting.

Apparantly they work on the 2010 (UK gen3) Prius on 220volts ac and at these prices are certainly an idea once my warranty runs out at 60k miles (only 37k miles to go). Any ideas on where I can gain more info for a layman such as me? What are the main differences between the 2 & 4kwh kits other than one having double the power and presumably better fuel economy?

Are the kits easy for someone like me (clueless for electrical items) to maintain? Is there much servicing required or are they pretty much set and forget?

I just didn't realise that I could modify my vehicle in this way for £2,000 which is pretty much the cost of a professional lpg conversion. (lpg is half the cost of petrol here and is quite a popular conversion for cheap running costs).

 

Hi Grumpy,

There's a forum on Enginer.us which has real users and issues etc. i've been reading about the kit for a couple of months (there's a whole ton of threads on here) and reading about the incremental improvements.

The 2kwh kit contains 16 batteries, the 4kwh contains 32. the 4kwh weighs close to dobule the2kwh.

Running under 30mph in EV mode, the 2kwh would take you about 10 miles, the 4kwh around 20. alternatively, while burning petrol, you will see an improvement in economy for 20 miles with 2kwh, or 40 miles with 4kwh. it's difficult to say what the exact improvement would be, and it depends on your current efficiency. the way to work it out is look at your current miles and gallons each day, reduce the gallons figure by the amount of energy the kit will displace:
1 US gallon is 33.6kwh (according to wikipedia) so a uk gallon is 43.95kwh. the usable energy extracted by the prius engine (estimated 35% efficiency) is 15.38kwh.
the 2kwh kit has a SOC window of 80%, so only 1.6kwh is usable. the 4kwh has 3.2kwh usable. after travelling through the DC-DC coverter (i assume 90% efficiency) the power delivered to your prius is 1.44kwh and 2.88kwh respectively. that works out to 0.09 and 0.19 of a gallon respectively. I'll make a guess on your current economy:

100 miles per day at 50MPG.

so on a normal day you use precisely 2 gallons (miles divided by MPG). if we take away the 2kwh's 0.09 of a gallon, your new MPG (100 miles divided by 1.91 gallons) is 52.5MPG. the 4kwh is 55.2MPG. so a small improvement, saving .85 litres of fuel a day. if you could recharge the 4kwh kit at lunch time as mentioned before, you'd actually displace 0.37 gallons (1.7 litres) and achieve MPG of 61.5.

The calculations are VERY different for me. i drive 35 miles a day at 62mpg. when i displace the same 0.19 gallons using the 4kwh kit i get 92.8mpg. i know with some careful driving and a few EV only trips to the shop, i should get 100mpg.


The kit today is not installable by someone with no electrical knowledge (and i don't think that will change), but the maintenance should have been drastically reduced. a lot of the threads are about battery balancing, but the newest kits include an active battery balancer. provided they work as promised there should be no intervention required except plugging it in.

I am ordering a kit next month and will be installing myself. I'll post up about it here, and i'll drop you some pm's about how it performs. there's a few people in the UK interested, and i'll do whatever i can to let people see it and help when installing their own.

 

Cheers Flaninacupboard. I'd be very interested in how you get on. I really would have thought the benefits to me would be greater though. I usually manage to get back home half way through my shift for at least 30 mins for my tea break. I also do around 35k miles a year at an average of 48 mpg at the mo.

 

your so right on that
but watch out the `clean` diesel is also trying to take over the US.
so protect yourselfs

oT
i would love to drive these PHEVs

 

Nice one Flaninacupboard.

It would be great to have some feedback and support on UK conversions.