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Is the person assembling the new battery pack really an engineer? If not, then shame on the IEEE.

I paid $21,000 for my brand new Prius in 2004. It gets 53 mpg. Why would anyone pay another $32,000 to get this level of "improvement?" There is a lot of research that shows that the power plant that produces the electricity to do the plug-in charge emits more pollutants in the process than the car does without the charge!

What a waste of time, money and resources. Reputable sources all seem to agree that the carbon foot print from electric powered cars is the same as from gaoline powered cars. Why? becuae half of the elctricity generated in the US comes from coal burning power plants.

What's the cost/mile for the wear-out of that Li-ion battery? Generally, modern Li-ion batteries have a lifecycle rating of 300 to 500 full-discharge cycles to reduce capacity to 80%, and in practice discharge to half-charge rather than all the way down gets you about twice that number of cycles, if the battery pack temperature is well-controlled. Get it warm, and it's not so good. I tested a modern Li-ion cell to 2000 cycles with an ideal (lab-quality) charge system, just for fun, and it had 10% of initial capacity left. And then there's calendar life; keep a Li-ion battery fully charged and it loses capacity just sitting there, particularly if the weather is hot. Seems like it might be wise to do a full-circle economic analysis on the plug-in Prius conversion.

The idea that electricity production has the same carbon foot print as automobiles do is laughable. Have you not heard of hydro power, wind power, solar power, nuclear power, etc? Take a look at the blended electricity production figures--if we assume that 50% is correct than the PHEV reduces the carbon footprint by half. 100% of gasoline cars spew carbon and other pollutants into the environment. Power plants have much better emmissions equipment than do automobiles--they are well maintained and much larger.

As for full-circle economic analysis what a joke that is. What is the payback on a big screen TV, a computer, a coffee maker, a radio, etc, etc. Last I knew this guy wasn't try to make money with the thing--so what if it is a money looser. Do you know of ANY automobile that isn't? I sure don't. My dad always told me don't put your money in rolling stock.

Eventually PHEV and EV automobiles will club the internal combustion engine into a niche role--you can't beat the efficiencies of an electric drive and associated electricity production. Articles like this will help in showing people the way...

I really don't think the sole point of all this is to save somebody money or save the environment. We need to look at the long term effects. By allowing a vehicle to run on power from both ICE and an outlet, it becomes a bridge. Sure, a good portion of the electricity is generated by coal now, but there are new ways of generating electricity being explored all the time. What if the person who ends up using this actually has all of their electricity coming from a wind turbine or some PV modules? How do the numbers compare there? Please, don't be so hasty to dismiss these proof of concept and exploratory ideas as a waste.

Well, Someone help me UNDERSTAND. I think we are generating more waste and hurting the environment more with these batteries. What will we do with them when they are no longer good.

It's dissapointing to see IEEE buying into the plug-in car hype. Half of our electricity comes from coal and that number will increase, because there is a perceived abundance of coal. The way we extract coal (mountain top removal) is much more environmentally damaging than drilling for oil. The efficiency of a coal fired power plant is about 30%; the electric grid is about 50% (aluminum wires); then consider the efficiency of the charging circuitry. Nuclear and solar are not coming to our rescue. About the batteries: Part of Alberta Ca. has been turned into a moonscape extacting and smelting Nickel for hybrid batteries.

Well, today I can buy 5,260 gallons of gasoline for $32,000, which will take my Toyota Echo 210,000 miles. I fail to see the payback in this conversion. Then again, you can usually tell the pioneers by the brace of arrows stuck in their backs...

There is another type of hybrid that beats electric hybrids. They're called hydraulic hybrids. They are much more efficient at recapturing braking energy.

I think its a wonderful experiment but I didn't see $32k worth of justification for me.
Those sheiks holding us hostage should be buying this stuff.

I find this experiment interesting. In Iceland there is quite a bit of discussion about plug in hybrids and several cars already on the streets. I would like to remind some of the ethnocentric writers leaving comments that there is more to the world than the good old US of A, and there are IEEE members in all the regions. I pay 4 times more for the gallon of gasoline and so does most people of Europe. But all electricity in Iceland is clean energy not a single Watt is produced by fossil fuel. So, very interesting experiment for open minded people.

Congratulations. While I do not buy into the hype of electric cars, I do commend these people for sucessfully retrofitting a key component of the vechicle. Was manufacturer support involved with this project? Perhaps replacing the gasoline engine with a diesel one would be the next evolution of the project. It is important to realize that the destination is not always the most important aspect of a project. What is learned and developed along the way is often more valuble. Many technologies are initally developed at a loss and become profitable later.

While I agree this is kind of crazy for the price, the concept of a plug-in hybrid itself is pretty valid. While it is likely true that the Prius itself has a lower carbon footprint than the average powerplant (in fact, the SULEV emissions standard basically made that requirement, and PZEV is cleaner still), who's average? I get my power from a 100% renewable energy plan, so in my case, the plug-in is lower emissions, still.

Of course, you could make the argument that for $32,000, you could just drive the Prius, buy carbon credits for the difference, and run a zero footprint for the life of the vehicle, and likely have a down payment on its replacement left. That's the problem with doing these oners, rather than making it a commercial process.

Those Chinese Li-ion cells will die pretty quickly, I suspect. And there's some efficiency loss due to the electronics; their Li-ion controller has to convince the Prius it's got a NiMH pack, since the charging curves are very different (Li-ion, specifically, is tricky). The commerical Li-ion based plug-ins on the way (next-gen Prius, Chevy Volt) will use one of the new Lithium technologies that doesn't wear out so fast.

Plug-in makes tons of sense from the energy management prespective. An all-electric car should be about 80-90% efficient, from plug to wheel... a Prius is about 24% efficient from pump to wheel, and an average ICE car runs 15% or so. Not to mention the fact that there's at least the potential for real competition in electricity, as new forms (like photovoltaic, modern nuclear, and other lo/no-carbon sources) meet, then exceed, the econonomies of natural gas or coal.

As far as the batteries go, regular Prius batteries are always recycles. Toyota pays something like $200 for any battery pack in any shape, so they don't wind up in landfills. I'd be more concerned over the Chinese Li-ion cells. Also, being involved in the radio control business, I've some experience with this kind of battery, and I'd worry a bit about their choice... while certainly, the Chinese make low-cost cells, their consumer cells also vary widely in capacity, and suffer from fairly high "infant mortality" rates. It's common enough among consumer cells in general, but in particular the cheap Chinese cells (on a recent robotics project, we redesigned to use NiMH/Li-ion military batteries, like the BB-390 or BB-2590, there was too much variation across even fairly high quality consumer cells).