Reality now: Cars converted to the future - 100 miles per gallon

Cars converted to the future - 100 miles per gallon
By John Murawski | Raleigh News & Observer


In a windowless workshop near the county landfill, a small Raleigh company has spent the past year trying to solve the nation's energy crisis one car at a time.

The cluttered Advanced Vehicle Research Center garage, tucked in an office park, can accommodate two Toyota Priuses. Lately, the bay stays full. Demand keeps the cars rolling in for a makeover some say will become standard as the car industry weans itself off gasoline. In less than four hours, the mechanics at the garage can outfit a Prius with a second battery pack. It emerges as a hybrid that can plug into a wall outlet to recharge like a cell phone.

The result: A car that breaks a once-unimaginable fuel efficiency barrier and delivers 100 miles per gallon. The spare battery costs less than 75 cents to charge and gives the plug-in Prius about a 35-mile range solely on electric power, making gasoline optional on short commutes. Retrofitting Priuses has become a full-time occupation for the Advanced Vehicle Research Center.

Even as gas prices have retreated from record highs, the cost of tanking up is changing lifestyles. Many people are driving less and ditching SUVs for smaller cars. Automakers are switching production to economy models and rushing to roll out hybrids. Research is accelerating on new technology such as long-range electric cars and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Read the complete story at newsobserver.com The Advanced Vehicle Research Center is one of a handful of companies that converts the Prius or other hybrids into plug-in hybrids, doubling their gas mileage. The auto center sees demand mostly from corporate customers with fleets of cars, but recently converted its first car for a private consumer.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/52184.html

News Observer link:

http://www.newsobserver.com/business/technology/story/1213178.html

"Payback on her investment will require patience. When gasoline costs $4 a gallon, the $10,400 cost of a custom conversion by his company could take 140,000 miles to recover through fuel savings"

That's about TEN YEARS with average driving, NOT including the payback on the original investment of the Prius.


Will the batteries last 10 years???

I've done the math too many times to know that for most people there just isn't any financial payback after spending the extra money on the hybrid system-- you're still buying a gasoline motor and adding to it the cost of all those electrics.

(Of course, for most people just fixing up the car they have it a better deal than getting a new one, but who ever said buying a car is a rational process?)

Now, if I had the money to throw away, I might consider, purely as an experiment, buying one of those S-10 conversions to pure electric and carrying around a little 3K generator for a couple of hundred bucks. The Volt is similar idea, but there are a thousand reasons, Federal safety and emissions regulations chief among them, why Honda can't just put one of their little generators in your trunk.