Real Fuel Economy | Green Energy News

April 24, 2005 – Vol.10 No.5

REAL FUEL ECONOMY.

It’s possible. In a few years a car that gets only 50 miles per gallon might be considered a gas guzzler. Really.

Another year of gasoline at well over $2 per gallon may get more and more drivers to demand the next possible evolution of the hybrid - the plug-in hybrid.

The technology is here today. Already second-generation Toyota Prius sedans have been upgraded to become Prius-Plus plug-in electric hybrid vehicles (PHEV). An additional battery pack and recharging outlet allow the car to be driven 30 miles or more on battery power alone. The additional battery pack can be recharged overnight on household current at a time of day when power plants are still operating, but selling little electricity.

The high fuel economy - 100 miles per gallon or more - would be attributed to the ability drive on battery power alone. The more miles driven as an electric vehicle, the greater the overall fuel economy, even when the energy from the power plant charging the car’s batteries is converted to equivalent miles per gallon of gasoline.

People buying renewable energy from their utility to charge their PHEV, or generating their own green electricity, would have a very small pollution/greenhouse gas footprint.

And, there is a movement afoot to popularize plug-in hybrid technology.

The California Cars Initiative has created an information clearing house for PHEV technology in the hopes the technology will be shared, open sourced. Open sourcing would accelerate the development of the technology into viable commercial products such as conversion-to-PHEV kits.

One company, EDrive Systems, will be demonstrating its conversion of a stock hybrid Prius to a PHEV Prius at the Clean Cities Conference being held in Palm Springs, California. The EDrive equipped car,using a battery management and monitoring system from Energy Control Systems Engineering and lithium-ion batteries from Valence Technology, should get gasoline-equivalent fuel economy in a range of 100 -180 miles per gallon - depending on speeds driven and the distance driven on battery power alone. Partner company Clean-Tech is set to be a distributor of the EDrive conversion kit when it is available in a year or so.

If PHEV technology takes off and is eventually adopted by auto manufacturers, it won’t be the first time automobile companies changed direction by listening to car owners. Toyota, for instance, after years of watching young drivers modify their cars with a wide variety of aftermarket performance and customizing parts, opened a whole new line of cars that could be modified using Toyota’s own parts - the Scion division.

Visit the California Cars Initiative at http://www.calcars.org/ , Edrive Systems at http://www.edrivesystems.com/ , Energy Control Systems Engineering at http://www.energycs.com/ and Valence at http://www.valence.com/ .