- #25 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [pathstar1]
by tpe
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Aug 17, 2006 (7:34 am)
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Replying to: pathstar1 (Aug 17, 2006 6:32 am)
I think people are pretty aware of what the Prius is. It does have a battery pack and it does have an electric motor, the two components required for an electric vehicle. If the battery pack on a Prius is always charged between 30-70% then there is always some capacity to store additional energy that can come from an outside source. This new energy could then be used to power the car, i.e. it would now be able to go farther. Whether or not this is a good idea or whether it will void the warranty are separate issues. In the case of the Prius the battery pack is so small any additional distance gained would be negligible. I'd guess that if you charged the battery from 70% to 100% you would now have maybe 1/2 mile of all electric driving before you were back down to the 70% charge that you started with.
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- #26 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [crashq]
by jjgoodwin
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Aug 17, 2006 (7:35 am)
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Replying to: crashq (Aug 16, 2006 12:35 pm)
I searched for hours and couldn't find a separate charger that specifically said it would recharge the prius batteries.
Recharging to 70% is fine for me.
Any ideas/links to find the charger for sale?
To be clear, people keep talking about electric vehicles, or modifications. I *do not* want to modify my prius, nor try to drive it as an electric car. I just thought it would be nice to drive the first mile or two each trip on electricity, since I must maintain slow speeds (~25mph) for about 4 miles anyway.
For people who get on some rant about switching from one form of pollution to another, perhaps this is not really a good forum to rant in, since a Prius is a small car, and you would charge at night, I don't think it would "load down" our power grids. I'm also not looking to drive more than a few miles on electric.
If someone comes up with a way for $500-$800 or so to drive 10 miles on electric at <35mph which goes into the Prius, even if it is fully house charged, I'd be interested, but so far everything I've seen is $3k-$12.5k which is not appealing in the least. John
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- #27 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [jjgoodwin]
by gagrice
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Aug 17, 2006 (11:11 am)
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Replying to: jjgoodwin (Aug 17, 2006 7:35 am)
Any modification you do to a Prius hybrid system will void the warranty without a doubt. If you live in CA that is 10 years or 150k from new. The only way I would consider it is if I bought an old Prius that needed a new battery anyway. Then you could justify spending the money. You could probably pick up an out of warranty Prius for near nothing. There is one being offered on eBay with 110k miles for $4295 "buy it now". Says in perfect condition. Not salvage titled. Take it and invest 12 grand in Li-Ion batteries and a 110 volt charger and you may be the envy of Edmund's.
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- #28 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [tpe]
by midnightcowboy
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Aug 30, 2006 (6:18 am)
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Replying to: tpe (Aug 16, 2006 1:40 pm)
"I think that if you looked at the demographics of people purchasing these hybrids you'd conclude that they're probably smart enough to realize it isn't a money saving proposition. "
LOL the selling point of Hybrids is that they have high gas mileage and therefore it is implied they save money!
However, if you look at objective reviews on mileage measurements even the mileage savings is suspect.
Cheers,
MidCow
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- #29 of 34
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Combine with other thread ??
by midnightcowboy
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Aug 30, 2006 (6:22 am)
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Host --
You have two threads that appear to be the same. May be they should be combined.
Look at thread "Plug-in Hybrids"
Cheers and Power-On'
MidCow
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- #30 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [tpe]
by acdii
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Apr 05, 2007 (7:09 am)
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Replying to: tpe (Aug 16, 2006 2:06 pm)
I drive an F350 Dually Crewcab diesel Pickup. I just bought a Prius and with the amount of miles I drive each week just to go to work, the savings are about $500-600 a month, or so I figured, only time will tel for sure. Your statement regarding people who drive big truck dont think about mileage is false. Most people who drive big trucks have an ego issue, and dont care that they are dishing out huge bucks to drive their ego mobile around. OTOH, people like me who have the truck because I NEED the truck, I have horses, would LOVE to have a diesel hybrid that got 30% better fuel economy. Currently my 8000# truck averages 14 -18 MPG depending on weather and traffic, highway close to 20MPG. Diesel is a very efficient system, and if the Prius was diesel we would be looking at better acceleration and getting at least 60 MPG city instead of the actual 48. Highway would be considerably higher as well. We really need to have more diesel cars out there, but people have this impression that diesel is dirty etc, when in fact it is cleaner than gasoline cars, especially when properly driven and well maintained. Check out the new Mercedes benz E series diesel, it gets better EPA ratings than most hybrids, including the Camry and Accord. The new Particulate filters get rid of the PM that you see coming out of the tail pipes of trucks, the black smoke, which is really the only bad part of the diesel, and what most people dont realize is the particles from that smoke fall to the ground, and dont hang in the air like the exhaust fumes from cars do. Ever been behind a car that the driver mashed the accelerator on? That stinks worse than my truck under a hard load, and guess what, those hydrocarbons are what go UP into the atmosphere. The only true bad emission from a diesel is increased Nox emmisions when too much heat is applied to the fuel, from too much boost, or fuel delivery for increased horsepower. A properly tuned and driven diesel produces less NOX, CO, and CO2, than the newest ULEV gas engine. The newest diesel, with the EPA junk added on meets the same levels as the Prius does.
If more SUV's, cars and trucks were diesels, they would get better EPA ratings, and put out fewer emmisions, people will just have to deal with the smell of the fuel itself, as the tail pipe smell is gone now from the new diesels.
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- #31 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [pathstar1]
by jg6
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Apr 10, 2007 (10:49 am)
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Replying to: pathstar1 (Aug 16, 2006 1:28 pm)
No Way!!
The Camry has over 5% more passenger volume and over 4% more cargo space.
You should have stuck with the "about" the same size.....
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- #32 of 34
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Re: Recharge Prius at Home on AC power? [acdii]
by roland3
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Apr 14, 2007 (4:35 am)
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Replying to: acdii (Apr 05, 2007 7:09 am)
... acdii, the NOX is created by heat and pressure in the combustion chamber. The temp of the fuel preinjection is almost a nonfactor, other than if it is too cold it does not combust as well. Actually I would like to see some studies done on the fuel starting at 300 F. but ALL the manus seem to fear their fuel system components. The NOX is one of God's cruel little jokes, as heat, pressure, compression gives us efficiency and power especially in Diesel.
... NOX, might not be the worse thing to breath, as compared to CO, HC and particulate but creates the BROWN haze and receives the most attention. I am for clean air but I think exhasut gas recirculation is not the way to obtain it. For one thing in a big truck it takes fifteen more horsepower to drive the fan with an EGR system. This is a big problem for thirty years because CARB and EPA measure exhaust gas quality and NOT quantity. Not to mention that many of these EGR systems are failure prone a few years down the road. I believe that air quality will follow fuel efficiency.
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- #34 of 34
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proper diesel applicatioins are great
by chadx
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Aug 16, 2007 (9:31 am)
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I just got back from our annual trip to Germany (we have family there) and rented a BMW 1 series for a 300 mile one-way trip up north. It had the small diesel engine. With the manual tranny, the acceleration was nice and zippy, though it took some adjustment to get used to the redline being so low for a small car. Maybe 5k rpm.
On our drive, I averaged between 90 - 110 mph with plenty of runs up to 120mph (and I was getting passed liked crazy) and still pulled over 40 miles to the gallon (I had to convert from metric, etc). That car is rated at 50mpg highway, and I'm sure it would get it at legal U.S. speeds. They have an even smaller diesel that is rated at 60mpg. BMW is also making changes this year to improve the hp rating 10 - 15% but still increase mileage 15%, so the 1 series will be even better. All this without any hybrid technology. Oh, and they meet all tier 2 emission requirements quite handely. It's definitely a "consumer perception" issue, in this country, regarding diesel power and it's performance, cleanlyness, etc.
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