Hymotion/A123 has announced that it is now taking orders to convert 2004-2008 Prius' to plug in hybrid technology. The conversion adds a battery pack where the spare tire sits, costs about $10k and has a three year warranty. The battery will charge off of house power in under 5 hours and will make the Prius able to achieve 100 mpg over a 30-40 mile range. Also of note is that the cars have met governement crash safety tests, so the whole battery exploding thing should be behind us. There's a great animation worth checking out on the site to see what the batts are made of.
While this may seem steep to many, remember that this is just the beginning and the price point on these upgrades is only going to come down once they start hitting the market place and more people want them. It's a great start and in my opinion, about time.
Live Sustainably
Dave
4 comments:
Dave,
Do you mean 100 mph or 100 mpg. Don't know about you but I would want to achieve 100mph before 30 to 40 miles.
Woops, thanks for the catch. I changed mph to mpg so it reads correctly now. On the flip side, if you've evr been in a prius, 100 mph may not be something you want to do. It's not quite made for speed if you know what i mean.
dave
Dave,
Any idea of the usage and cost of electricity for each re-charge.
Richard
Hey Richard,
I actually don't know electricity costs but I dropped and email to afriend who may know. Pure electrics generally talk of about 1 cent per mile versus 30-40 for gas (as I recall) so I'd assume this in that area. Keep in mind there are a lot of factors including what time of day you recharge, etc. to take into account.
By usage did you mean how many miles the batts are good for?
dave
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