Others, I'm sure, have heard of this but I had not. http://www.enginer.us/ It's about $3500. Instead of getting in deep with the car, swapping out its master battery, this simply sits in the mostly useless compartment in the trunk and is a second battery. It plugs in and its only purpose is to recharge the normal battery to keep it topped off. Mileage in city improves quite a bit, not much on highway. This is still a "waste" of money--I'd never do it. However, I came upon a guy in Colorado who says the state rebates 85% and federal 10%, so he can get this for basically $200. I've not read in depth on this but a quick glance on the website seems to hint that it's about as plug and play as a conversion could be, since it's not a real conversion. For somebody not wanting to get into the guts of a new car they've purchased this really seems interesting.
And I'll assume you haven't heard of the search function on this site either. If you put in Enginer, you get 287 results where others have been talking about that system. Sorry to pick on you, but as a senior member, you should use search first.
Yep, i have one. My december MPG was 54, with the kit now in my current tank is on 80.4 My work place is installing chargers some time soon, and petrol is $7.65 a gallon here. The kit will pay for itself within 24 months, which is it's guarantee period. If fuel gets any more expensive (it will) the payback will be quicker.
I actually kicked some numbers around on the Enginer upgrade...to the point where I downloaded and read the install guide. Their charger is rated at 7 amps if I remember correctly, and the EV range was a lot higher than 13 miles for both kits. (EDIT: I just re-read the page to see if I remembered correctly---and I didn't. The 2KWh kit is rated for 10-miles, the 4KWh kit is rated for 20.) I thought the cabin switches could have been a little less "Radio Shacky", but it seems to be a solid investment---MUCH cheaper than the PHV upgrade that the Aichi Iron Works is planning---although I won't be pulling the trigger on either the PHV or the Enginer kit myself until I get my own Prius. I'm sure that my beloved company would loooove for me to do a $4000 upgrade to their car, but I don't think so. The 2-year ROI is probably only valid overseas, where gas is well north of $5 a gallon (our gallon, not yours!) depending on lots of things of course. The battery pack is allegedly rated for 2,000 cycles, which would put the expected service life somewhere in the 5 year range, so you'd probably see a theoretical return, even with gas at 3 bucks a gallon. Tree-huggers will also like the extended EV range benefit for reasons other than purely economic ones. I'll let them opine on that. If anybody in interested, just start a new thread asking about it. You'll get about 12 replies in the first hour, and if you weed out the strident demands to use the search button (which actually does work for this topic, unlike some others) you'll probably get two or three links to pages that have more details on this upgrade. If you HAVE to have a for-real, OEM plug-innable Toyota car, you do not have to have a garage, or a 'special' facility. A regular outdoor (preferably GFI) outlet with a fairly short heavy duty extension cord will work just fine. I'd probably use something like a 25' (or shorter) 12-AWG outdoor extension cord.
Definitely 2 year ROI is not valid here in most or all cases unless a big tax rebate. if I got that 85% off from Colorado I'd do it! Otherwise paying $4k for this I ran the numbers quickly and it would be hard to break even before I'm an old man.
the 4kwh kit is quoted at 20 miles EV/40 blended. I'd say that's right for 20mph and 40mph, but if you're doing 60mph you get about 60 miles blended, but at a lower MPG. The output current of the kit (14 amps) is the constant limiting factor. Completely agree, it looks a bit naff. But like most switches in your car once you know where it is you don't look at it much. The price today for a US gallon is $7.65, an imperial gallon is $9.19! That's why it's priced per litre here, to make it less obvious just how much it's costing you... Once you have a stable system it does seem to be the batteries that limit you. The older Mottcell batteries seemed to only last 18 months or so, but the new better BMS and the Realforce batteries will hopefully last longer.
