APR 27

That is just insane. When you add up the cost of the car, the conversion, the cost of electricity to run it and repairs (which will probably be very expensive), plus any gas, oil and tires, you could probably operate two small standard gasoline cars for the same price.

Yeah, at $10k for the module, which is completely new and unproven, gas would have to skyrocket for this to be justified financially. But cars running on electric power should stress the engine less (less heat) so maintenance might not be so bad.
Still, at this point, buying one could only be justified as a gift to the environment.

Don't forget, electricity isn't all that green.
* Coal Powered stations, still provided a huge chunk of power.
* All forms of power generation require some oil, some plastics some ... all consuming resources

A Myth about Matter

Jim Fournier is founder and President of the Biomass Energy & Carbon,
a Colorado based R&D company commercializing biomass gasification and
developing a revolutionary new "carbon negative" bio-fuels technology
that can remove CO2 from the air by generating sustainable energy and
a high-carbon fertilizer from biomass. http://www.biomassec.com
In this episode we look at his work and vision of where we stand and
what we need to do to bootstrap the system into being...

http://www.iclips.net/pmt.php

I can't wait to see the clouds of smug after this baby hits the market!

These claims are getting old. When you are running the car on battery power from a wall charge, it doesn't make sense to claim you are getting fantastic gas mileage. You are not traveling 100 miles on a gallon of gas. You are traveling 30 miles on 1/3 gallon of gas that costs $1, plus $2 in electricity from the wall, plus the environmental cost of manufacturing and disposing of the toxic chemicals in the battery.

This is not a green technology!

As I understand it, electricity generated by coal is about twice as efficient (from "well (or mine) to wheel" as gasoline). In general, the cost of an item is a pretty good first order estimate of the investment in resources required to build it. An unsubsidized Prius is about 50% more expensive than a Honda Civic. Simple arithmetic shows you need to drive a Prius 180,000 miles before you break even with the Civic in terms of cost.

But if we are simply talking carbon footprint, lacking access to Toyota's or Honda's internal data, we need to assume that, say, some percentage of the cost of a vehicle's manufacture consists of carbon input and make the calculation that way.

If I treat each $4 spent buying the car as if it were spent on gasoline (!) we get the surprising result that the Prius $10,000 modification pays for itself and its carbon footprint at around 160000 miles (at $4/gallon, anyway).

The assumed environmental impacts may be way out. LIon or NiMH batteries may be a whole lot more toxic than, say, typical parts from a Honda Civic, or not.

You can double-check my calculations here:
http://tinyurl.com/6pglrh

I just realized the mod only improves fuel consumption, it doesn't replace it, so it's not a "pro-rated" 100MPG but 100MPG consuming power. This makes it strictly worse than the base Prius beyond 180,000 miles.

the title is wrong.
This does not make a "100 MPG" car
since it's discharging the battery, and the cost of recharging the battery is not taken into account.

They cant include the cost of electricty as that varies even more than the cost of gas. Nor can the accurately state the carbon footprint of this system as everyones source of electricity is different. But the facts that remain:
-electric motors are more efficient than ICE
-even coal fired electricity is more effecient than an ICE for energy
- our sources of ectricity are slowly becoming greener
(electricity isnt 'green' its colourless! its the source that determines its 'shade of green'. Electricity is much more effecient,much more abundant than fossil fuels. Its main drawback is storage.)
All that being said....I would love to have a system like this (dont own a Prius thou- nor have $10k!). Its far from perfect- but a step in the right direction. We didnt pollute our environment over night- and we wont be able to 'green' it overnight either!

Baby steps people! Baby steps!

Wow. Calm down people. This is a good thing. Would you prefer we shut all the electric anything in a big safe and sank it to the bottom of the sea? All because it's not a PERFECT solution?

I mean, I'm an anti-greenwashing stooge, and I'm still not as rabidly cynical as some in this thread.

As much as I love me some Tesla, Fisker, ZENN, Volt and every other EV option, I genuinely believe that in the near-ish future, it's going to be all about plug-in hybrids. This is a great step in getting consumers more experience with the viability of the technology. I'll be pulling for it to work.

It has been added to the Green Product Site Huddler if anyone has a chance to try it out:
http://greenhome.huddler.com/p...ttery-pack

Great post!

The plugin hybrid and the such is about keeping families and the world running. Also, there is the nice in your face to the automotive industry who is right now delaying to reap profits on existing manufacturing.

There is no "green" instant solution. You can say solar, you san say wind - and yes if we build it, then sure. But to put the wagon (needing a clean footprint) before the horse (in this case switching to electric vehicles) would be silly.

If you were thinking the best solution is for everyone to stop everthing and give the planet a hug - you need to read more history, aint gonna happen.

I read all the comments regarding this new plug in module, and agree that $10K is a little rich, but here in British Columbia where I live, electricity is produced by water and gravity (Hydro electric) and gas has just hit $1.30 a liter, thats an astounding $4.92 per US Gallon. And thats not the end, when you consider that gas sells in England right now for $12.69 per US Gallon, and we have always watched the price of gas in England to see where we are going to be 18 to 24 months from now. And oh yes, one last thing, has anyone noticed how weird the weather is getting year to year; can anyone say "climate change"? The frog is getting uncomfortable!

We all seem to think that the electric providers will sit still as cars begin to guzzle voltage from them. Just like petrol companies have cranked up their prices to cover costs of lower expected demand, power companies think the same. But is it unfeasible to create more aggressively-producing solar panels to fuse to the roofs of vehicles so they can charge in parking lots or even during driving?

How about a way to hook one of these up to an existing gasoline engine vehicle to improve the performance there? I would love for my 11MPG pickup to get 22 instead. That is were you are going to see serious improvements!

YOU might think $31,000 for a vehicle ($21,000 for the Prius and $10,000 for the modification) is expensive, but people buy cars that cost $31,000, and more, EVERY DAY. So why not buy a plug-in hybrid instead? Even if coal is used to generate the electricity to fuel this vehicle, it costs less and results in much less pollution than gasoline. Better yet, buy your electricity from renewable sources and then running the car's electric motor is essentially a pollution-free ride. And yes, some places are already designing "fueling" stations that run on solar electricity. I am all for it - bring on the plug-ins!

I'm not so sure about this. I mean, the idea is solid, but the gains versus the cost just don't seem to actually help in the long run...unless it's the VERY VERY VERY long run, in which case, the car might actually break down before you see gains.

Say you drive 50 miles a day. The current gas average is 3.60 per gallon. The Prius gets 48/mpg city, 45/mpg highway. The battery sees a maximum efficiency of 100/mpg...for at best, 40 miles. You try to fill up every 10 gallons.

Without the battery, you would use up approximately a gallon a day. Every 10 days, you would fill up: 36 bucks. So in a year with those parameters, you would spend 1314 on gas.

Now with the battery.

On your average day, The battery works for 40 miles. the remaining 10 are with normal fuel economy. So the first 40 miles takes .4 gallons. The next 10 miles takes about .21 gallons. So, that's .61 gallons p/day, which equals out to 801.54 a year in gas. Also, couple that with the approximate 0.50 a day to charge it, which is 182.50 per year. Total: 984.04 per year with gas/electric costs. A grand total savings of 329.96 a year.

Great, right? Don't forget the 10k cost of the battery. 9995 plus the 400 destination fee. Not even taking into account applicable taxes, it would take you over 31 YEARS to see any gain from this thing. That's BEST CASE SCENARIO.

Course, that's assuming you still have the car after 31 years.

While I think the idea is great, they really need to work on it. The overall cost versus the actual gains make it not worth it in my eyes. As much as I would love to see a green car be greener, this is a waste of money.

Right now it might not have a sense to add $10 000 to the cost of the car, too long to recover.
If the trend with oil price rising will continue (and that what is expected) gasoline in US might go to $10 per gallon. Then the math totally change. You have to think at list 2-5 year a head.
I read sower that the OPEC will nit be surprise if the oil price go to $200 per barrel in 2008 with average price of $120. So go figure.
We have to remember that the usage of oil in US is 464 gallons per person per year on average.. but there are stated that going to more then 500).
http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gasoline_per_capita.html

Where in China it is 9.5 gallons per person per year.
And in India 2.35 gallons per person per year.
http://gog2g.com/2007/11/12/average-gallons-consumed.aspx

Just looking on this number and you can realized that lowering the fuel prices are impassible unless the fuel in US so expensive that the people will stop driving.

If you were to mod your Prius with this what would that do to the re-sale value. Would a dealership accept it as a trade-in?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jt5z8L4LBJE

if you want your electricity to be greener, you can write an email to your electricity company to do what Nstar is doing in Massachusetts... they are charging about $4-7 more per month if you sign up to have 50% or 100% of your power come from renewable energy.
http://www.nstaronline.com/residential/

Do what Nik Tesla suggested.
Make the main drive motor an AC motor.
For now, use a clean diesel, 250cc engine for the power plant that can later be converted to peanut oil, biodiesel or hydrogen if you'd like.
Just like the government helped Detroit by giving huge tax breaks to businesses to buy a pick up or suv, the could give the general public incentives by giving huge tax breaks for those that convert their existing drive system or buy a new vehicle based on this technology.

People like to mod their cars! Does anyone question the payback of fitting a $10,000 supercharger to their already powerful enough V8? Or spending $5k on a sound system. Well now you can mod your Prius, if it might not save you money, but it WILL save the planet more than that super charger can. Shame it doesn't make it go faster too ;-)

I love this discussion. I drive a SUV because of the impact the environment has on me. If I got a Prius, I'd drive it like a motorcycle, which means if I get hit by anything out there I'm toast. My co-worker got a Civic GX ($7k more than gas Civic)that he fills up at home ($4k for fill appliance) and gets a 20% break on all his home natural gas. Hydrogen Clarity is coming to LA this year too. I'd ride my bicycle to work but I hate to suck in all the emissions as huff and puff next to 50 mph traffic. It's not easy being green.

Why is shelling out $31,000 for a 100mpg Prius
a waste of money while spending the same on a 10mpg Dodge Ram pickup not? This is all about the
attitude of the US consumer that must change.

The statement was I think was that, with the added battery pack, the mileage in hybrid mode would rise from 45 mpg to over 100 mpg. This seems possible in many situations because the Prius battery is not now able to capture most of the energy from a moderate downhill coast The added battery pack might capture this energy. One concern I have is that on a short trip of only say 2 miles the engine runs to warm itself up even if the battery is fully charged. It likely would do the same with the added battery pack. So one would need to make trips of more than say 5 miles to fully see the kit's advantage. I now get about 47 mph on longer trips when the terrain is not mostly hilly, but only 32 when the trips are mostly 2 miles. I live in a hilly part of Portland.

By the way, the base price of Prius in Canada is just about $30000. So for all of you contemplating if it's worth paying extra $10K, just think of your northern friends who are getting same car for the same $30K, but without any additional 100mpg battery pack ;)

An angle people are forgetting is geopolitical, not environmental. Gas prices this summer will probably exceed $4. Indirectly, that $4 is being paid to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Dhubai, and a host of other countries whose goels very frequently diverge markedly with yours and mine (assuming you think gays shouldn't be stoned, women should be aloud to vote and drive, and the press should be free). Even if it were environmentally neutral, any step that reduces reliance on foreign oil is presumptively a good step.

If I have a wind turbine to get "basically" free energy and/or a solar panel that I can put on top of the car to charge it on sunny days this could be a really nice deal!

Its not about price, I just spent $30,000 on a 2008 prius with all the good stuff (the navigation system is a total waste of money) last year I drove over 35,000 miles and I will do the same this year, I cut my fuel use in half, and I would be happy to spend $10,000 (and the price will come down)with a USA company and not give my $$$ to countries that do not like us, our addiction to oil is as destructive to our economy as crack is to our society. Plug-in’s and hybrids may not be the answer to all our needs but they are a great step in the right direction.

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hi,there

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This is simple focus on the article not the over all political arguement. One problem the price, automakers don't build it because they are scared to offer it at that price(I bought my prius for 25,000 stock). second is only warrentied for 3 yrs. You will never beable to sell it to anyone with them knowing they need to spend 5 to 10 grand for a replacement. The more you try to continuously recharge the batt. the shorter its life. Auto makers want to have that 10 yr life batt. setup. They can't sell a car that in 3 yrs needs a 10 thousand dollar replacment batt. In 3 yrs we could be well beyond this batt. type and your investment will look like a waste. This company could fold tomorrow and now you can't get replacments for this batt. you bought. At least with toyota the government mandates they sell replacment parts for a least 10 yrs if not more. I would be very careful buying anything from a up start company selling unproven technology.

forget this nonsense about a solar panel on the roof of your car, it's just a gimmick. A prius sized solar panel (Prius sized, not Prius roof sized) costs $2500 and would take days to get enough charge to fill the battery. You wanna wait 3 days to go 40 miles? walk. slow.

If you were to mod your Prius with this what would that do to the re-sale value. Would a dealership accept it as a trade-in?