I just came across an article from Nuts & Volts Magazine from August 2008 titled "Hacking the Prius". The Cover of the magazine showed a Prius and this title "Pimping" the Prius Get up to 100 MPG with this hybrid hack. In it the author, Jim Fell, added 56, 50AH Thundersky Lithium batteries to his Prius. I tried to search PriusChat for discussion on this article but came up with nothing. Did anyone else see this article?
After looking around a bit on the internet, it turns out another article contained the same info as the Nuts & Volts article. Here's the link to the alternate article by The Institute of Engineering and Technology titled "How to Get 100mpg From Your Car" published June 6, 2008.
Yes, I have the article. It was really pretty ingenious at the time. Jim Fell, who lives in England, used a Manzanita Micro PFC40. The PFC40 allowed him to output DC current, from a 210V Li-Ion battery pack he happened to have on hand, to one of two separate lines, a "high line" or a "low line." For the "high line" he set it to charge the NiMH Prius battery to 70%, and for the "low line" he set it at a slightly lower voltage to allow the Prius battery to go back down to 65%. He limited the current to 25 amps from the battery pack (apparently because of the condition of his battery pack, not the limit of what the PFC40 could provide). He made essentially a minicomputer to monitor the CANbus and throw a pair of high voltage power contactors depending on the SOC of the Prius battery. He was thus able to get about 100 mpg in this "battery boost mode." He talked about a future project of automatically switching the car to EV mode if it was under 30mph. I still think the Manzanita method is interesting, but there are a couple of drawbacks I have run into. It is a bit expensive, but apparently it is of a very high quality, and I can't get the specifications. What is a real benefit though is that it will also double as the battery pack charger too, which saves the purchase of an expensive battery charger.
The conversion concept of Jim Fell is based on the PriPrius conversion type by Rich Rudmann. I demo this PHEV conversion in my 2004 Prius at Hybridfest 2007 in Madison, Wisconsin with sealed AGM's. EDIT: At those days in 2007 the PriPrius conversion was the 2nd more viable type; a power source of electricity powering a DC/DC converter to the NiMH Prius Hybrid pack. In a couple of years thereafter the Enginer DIY kit came along with the same principle of operation but with a lower quality of DC/DC converter to make it "affordable" for the common Joe. Automation tech calls this equipment, a technical innovation.
I didn't quite understand the need to hackthe CAN bus ? was he trying to charge the Lithium pack with regen power ? I think it was kroubs (sp?) on one of these threads who had a 8kwh Enginer kit with 2x 3000w converter, thus approaches the 25a stock pack charge. He has separate switch for each controller thus use 1 or both Enginer converters as needed. Though at 8kwhrs, the price is $7000
