171mpg in Prius Plug-in Hybrid Electric (PHEV)

[crystalscan2002]

i iwsh gas was that cheap

[wordsmith52]

V impressive & congrats. Isn't there a danger that you will be using the electric engine & related parts too much (more than the designers intended) and that it will wear out more quickly - plus the ICE gets little use at all and also deteriorates for lack of use? (I have a genuine interest in thi as i have recently acquired a Prius and am still experimenting with driving tactics)

[passinthreu]

what is the oil / coal  consumption & carbon foot print required to generate the electro power part of the hybred plug ins ? and what is the disposal expences related to hybreds ?

[foxchemdry]

@passinthreu your statement is about as ludicrous as your spelling. Do you complain about the fossil fuels burned when you flip on your lights at home or watch TV? NO. And I can assure you that the car you drive churns out far more pollutants than any hybrid. Do us all a favor and go back to school to both learn more about what you're spouting, and to learn how to SPELL.

[cdltpx]

We are bout to hit 60K with our 07 took one long trip to to Cave Creek Az this is the ultimate highway car if you like to drive 80mph with minimal stops sure mpg is only 38 but you are doing 80 mph with a range of 450 miles. Those numbers you can make a cross country journey in 2 days using little fuel. As for PEHV we have not converted yet should have done it already but we really don't use it enough to justify the cost wife comms 12miles round.We mainly go to NOLA for fun less than 100 miles.

[njipods]

it may have batterys but ALL the power still comes from gas

to get the full benafit off having an electric car you must beable to plug it it!

[davem5321]

@njipods Your comments are not true about this car. This car has a plug and I charge the batteries every night and also while I am at work.  The cool thing about living in Seattle is that most of our electricity comes from Hydro, so very little gas or coal is used to power this car.

[NoobSoldier2006]

@davem5321 How do you plug it in while you are at work? I think it might be hard for those who live in an apartment and must drag the power cable across other people's apartment unit to plug in your unit.

[MrEnergyCzar]

Can't wait to do this with my future volt...if I drive 25 or so miles per day I should average 5,000 mpg and 4.5 miles per KWH...not bad...

[blonder83]

Whate were the overall conversion costs? I am planning to buy a 2006/07 Prius and this possibility would be exciting for me!

[Metlenko1]

what that heck lol i get like 20 mpg haha on a good day lol thats way MB don make hybrids

[pcarlson1979]

Oh my god that is fantastic! Can you please upload a video showing you converted boot. How big are the batteries? 4Kw? 2Kw?

[davem5321]

The conversion was done almost 3 years ago by Hybrids Plus in Boulder CO. They are now known as Eetrex. They replaced the prius 1.3KW hr battery with a a 9KW hr battery made from A123 cells. Half of the pack sits under the back seat where the prius batter was at. The other half takes up part fo the hidden open space under the rear cargo area. I still have the original spare tire and all of the rear cargo area intact.

[davem5321]

I suspect our cars work the same for EV mode. My car trips out of EV mode at 35mph. And, when coasting or at low power needs the gas engine part always comes on at 41 mph even when I have a fully charged battery. I have read that this is the same worldwide for the series II Prius.

[davem5321]

Nope, this car does not have modifiled electronics to allow it to run faster on electric only. See my other videos where I demonstrate this fact.

[JUKIO01]

wait i dont get it. So its a plug in prius? how does that work? explain to me how a plug in prius get 171.2 miles per gallon. message me back, im actually really interested.

[sodapop503]

a plug in prius usually has extra batteries added, and the speed at which the electric motor engages is increased. So if you only drive in short, slow trips you can recharge it often and almost never have the engine start up.

[anthonycarl2020]

cool

[johan28]

Seattle has a fleet of 12 plugin prius hybrids. They report only getting 51mpg. They also say that the battery was dead a third of the time.

You can't expect normal people to practice effiicient driving techniques. Nor can you expect them to take out the seats and flooring to reduce weight.

[davem5321]

There were many factors that made an impact to the results in the Seattle study. For the rest of use the results will be much higher. here are a few factors that caused their numbers to be low.

1) They did not have EV buttons.

2) Fleet cars are driven often during the day and often for more than 40 miles. Commute cars are driven twice a day and often for less than 40 miles.

3) When you have to pay for the gas you can learn to avoid the 20-40% fuel economy hit for agressive driving.

[fast55chev]

I average 52mpg in my 06 Prius which travels 75 miles per day, and it's just a factory non modded car (no plug in).

This is also mostly highway use.

I find it hard to believe that they only got 51 mpg if they were actually plugin cars.

[kaduisaui]

Awesome video! I have a 2005 prius with HOV stickers. I want to convert the car to plug in and add solar panels across the top. Once I get the money I will do it. This is totally inspirational

[xxxxdarksidexxxx]

any updates? where is the link to getting on of these kits for my prius?

[tsport100]

How do you read that screen?

Is that saying in 1620 miles you regenerated only 375 Wh?

[davem5321]

That screen is saying that in the last 30 minutes the car generated 375whr of energy from regenerative braking. It is also showing that in the previous 30 minutes I was averaging over 100mpg. By the way, that was on the freeway.

[razarace]

How many times times you charge the battery?

[davem5321]

I recharge the battery everyday. My typical cost to recharge a day is $0.15. And, I drive 60 miles a day.

[darkalligator]

thats fanstatsticaly cheap in terms of cost, not talking about the cost of a condition the car to get that. i would like to have a car like yours. but when i get money :)

[razarace]

How many times you charge the battery?

[hdawgf]

Got a question, I have a Prius, wish to get that technology, but would charging the battery add the cost to your electric bill significantly? If not, SIGN ME UP!

[davem5321]

The cost of my electricity does go up a little. Right now I'm paying over $3.50 a gallon for gasoline to go about 50 miles on that energy. The equivalent energy in electricity is about $0.80. So, my energy costs per miles driven has gone down dramatically. However, the cost of the system is still expensive. The price is coming down.

[Rymac91]

I've learned to be careful with the gas gauge as the flexible gas tank sometimes doesn't fold out to full size, so the prius think it has a full tank, but in reality, it's only around 78% full. I've run out of gas in a prius because of this, and it's why the gas gauge is nicknamed the "wonder gauge".

[zaftpilot]

5000 miles with only 4 tanks of gas!? thats superior. My Civic Si coupe I bought couple months back had more stops to the gas station than I can count

[bloodeternalxx]

171.2 MPG is awesome. Good job.

[guitarrangel]

is this a regular prius or its a special edition? 

i heard the toyota prius give only 50 mpg but u are getin 171 mpg

[davem5321]

This car has been modified with a huge battery and a charger. I can recharge the battery at home and at work. Check out calcars(dot)org to learn more about plug-ins

[rocketman10owen]

how's the trunk space

the regular hybrid battery takes alot of space as it is

[davem5321]

The main trunk space is the same, no change. The extra battery uses half of the small hidden space below the main trunk deck. And, I sill have my spare tire.

[plica06]

The Prius would be even more fuel efficient if you didn't fill the tank full. You're carrying more weight that way. You should only fill it to half way next time.. you'll still only have to visit the gas station once a month or so! Wish more people drove this car!

[01DINGUS10]

Very intuitive thinking. Never thought of that.

[Matt0401]

It's actually very backed-up too. Any small car, most notably ones with low-power engines, will have a noticeable decrease in acceleration for a given throttle. The extra "flooring it" time needed to get to speed may remove the benefits of traveling less often to the gas station. Definitely interesting, and I'm surprised it isn't mentioned very often among hypermiling tips.

[kennayychu]

if you put in premium, you'll get better mileage.

[danielthechskid]

Wrong, if you put premium in a Prius the best that will happen is that nothing will change and the worst that will happen is that you will get a "Check engine" light due to misfire codes. The Prius 1NZ-FXE engine being Atkinson/Miller cycle is optimized for regular 87 octane.

[masmotors]

i like taht car if only it looked more like a corrola

[oenogeek2]

You can go 25 miles in all-electric mode, and it costs 2 cents per mile to drive in electric mode. So it only costs 50 cents to fully charge the car.

[davem5321]

Yes, that is right.

[KnightChatX]

You can pump 9 to 11 cents a gallon water for Hydrogen with a good water filter system.

[jstack6]

A123 hymotion is now selling this option. It's about 10K with 3 year warrenty. Thta's cheap compared to the 3 trillion iraq free the oil war.

We also subsidies oil at 13.1 Billion a year. We really pay $7 or more a gallon but most is hidden in federal tax to big oil.

I'm getting this for my prius in Aug 08

[MustSeeThisNow]

Great work Dave!! Sent you a message on your other video post - please check and respond when you've got a few minutes. Thanks for doing this and leading the way!! Eddie

[SSparks555]

To make the Prius a plug in, did you have to add a larger battery? I rented one and it sure did seem a little small. I noticed that, when the engine does turn one to charge the battery, it never tops off the battery. The only way I could do that is through regenerative braking.

[davem5321]

Yes, they had to add a bigger battery. The new battery is about 8 times bigger in electrical storage than the stock battery. But since they used A123systems batteries the total weight was only 2 times more than the original battery.

[SSparks555]

Did you wait for the factory warranty to run out? Probably not? I know it would be hard for me not to. Perhaps Toyota could do like most of the video game manufactures, and give us the cheat codes, LOL, so we could unlock the computer and change the perameters so we could finally have an electric car. One day, someone might....

[iamheuno]

How much do these upgrades cost? How much more are you spending in electricity costs to charge the battery?

[oenogeek2]

Dang I want this car so bad

[Dannyjjango]

wow...i want this car

[Dannyjjango]

wow...i want this car

[feliza7]

Hi!, Are you aware you don't suppose to top off when filling up!.

[davem5321]

Yes, just showing that I had indeeded filled up the tank.

[hrford]

Argh! You think you got it good? Our fuel in the UK is soo cheap, ... not

You're paying about $2.90/(US)Gal (About £0.38/ltr)

In the UK we pay £1.03/ltr which would be about $7.80/(US)Gal.

[botchalism]

Its always been expensive there, everyone knows that.

[oenogeek2]

I know, and that discourages massive (American style) use of gas. Man, british people are a lot smarter, huh?