How would you like to
get 100 plus miles per gallon in your Toyota Prius or Ford Escape? It sounded like a great idea to me! I drove my Toyota Prius to San
Francisco to become the first certified PHEV installer in the state of New
Mexico. What is even more impressive is, that depending on your commute you
could possibly drive to work and back home and never use any gas!!! That’s right, you could drive in EV mode
(Electric Vehicle Mode) without ever using the gas engine. Of course
it depends on your situation and how you drive, but the theory is this:
With a PHEV, when you park your car at night you plug it in to
charge an auxiliary battery pack located in the space between your spare tire
and the trunk inside the hatchback. Then
in the morning after you start your car you hit the EV Button which switches you
into Electric Vehicle Mode or NO GAS Mode and you can drive to
work on electricity. Then on the way home, you run a few short errands and
arrive home without ever using any gas! The best part is if you need to
run to the other side of town on the freeway for lunch, you can just drive in Standard
Prius Mode. You can switch back and forth as much as you want until
you use up the auxiliary battery pack. Once the auxiliary pack is depleted, you can revert back to Standard Prius
Mode for the rest of the day. Then, each night, you just plug it in to charge
up for the next day.
According to statistics I have seen from California, it costs around 65 cents
for each charge. I am sure that number was calculated at California Utility
Rates, which I would guess are more than New Mexico’s rates.
How do you get up to 100 MPG?
We have talked about EV Mode or NO GAS Mode which
is Electric Vehicle Mode and for short distances there is no MPG. I
like to call it NGPM (No Gallons Per Mile). The one thing about EV Mode is you
have a top speed of 52 miles per hour. So, if you drive on city streets no
problem, but if you drive more that 10 to 40 miles to work or you drive at
freeway speeds, than EV Mode won’t work for this situation. That brings me to Enhanced Hybrid Mode.
So now you have three modes, Standard Prius Mode, EV Mode and
Enhanced Hybrid Mode.
Most people don’t realize that your Prius is basically a 4
cylinder Gas engine car with assistance from two electric motors. The
Idea of a PHEV is to use the electric motors to assist the gas engine and help it get
higher gas mileage and more pick-up. At this time, the Prius is one of the only
Hybrids that can be driven strictly as an all electric car. I believe Toyota
designed it this way to encourage plug-in conversions.
Enhanced Hybrid Mode. When you need to drive
more than 10 to 40 miles to work and at higher speeds than 52 mph, you can use
Enhanced Hybrid Mode. Now your Prius becomes predominantly an Electric Car with a gas
engine for back up. The OEM Prius Battery that came in your car does not
store a lot of energy, about 2 to 3 miles in EV Mode. With an Auxiliary Battery
Pack you use the extra electricity you stored by charging it over night to
recharge the existing OEM pack as you drive. Thus, extending the range and
power of the OEM electric motors. So you can drive using more electricity
and less gas. Of course it depends on how you drive and how far, but there
are people who consistently get well over 100 MPG in town and 93 MPG on the
highway driving in a combination of EV Mode and Enhanced Mode. You can go to www.rechargeit.org and read about the mileage
tests being done at Google. Google has a whole fleet of PHEVs and allows their
employees to drive them so they can establish actual mileage results.
What if I want to drive to Denver?
If you know that you will have a
place to charge your Auxiliary Battery Pack when you get to your destination,
then you can start off in Enhanced Hybrid Mode until the pack runs down. Usually about
an hour or two. Then the car automatically switches back to Standard Prius Mode
for the remainder of the trip. You can see how driving in Enhanced Hybrid Mode
the first part of your trip will kick your MPG way up for the overall trip.
Battery Technology. Let me first say, I am not an engineer. Therefore, I
can’t give you the complete rundown on batteries. If you want to research the
latest in battery technology and for that matter the latest on Plug-In Hybrids
I would suggest you visit www.calcars.org
and www.pluginamerica.org. This is the birthplace of this whole movement and the best source of
information about PHEV’s bar none. These are the people who started this whole
movement with the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car”. Which if you have not
seen, I highly suggest you rent a copy and watch it as soon as possible.
My take on batteries is that they are evolving as we speak.
The situation is there have been many people testing the latest batteries
technologies. But no one battery has come out as the clear leader yet. Testing
is on-going and they are only available on a very limited basis and are still
very expensive. Some of the new batteries are lighter and have a longer life. However,
they run thousands of dollars more than lead acid at this time. The one thing
that will bring down the cost of these batteries is mass production. Several
car companies like Toyota, GM and others are working to have PHEV’s available
for sale by 2010 to 2012. Once they begin production, I expect battery prices
to tumble much like home electronics. Think big screen TV’s, the more they sell
the lower the price gets.
