cbs2chicago.com - Brothers Team Up To Create 100-Mile-Per-Gallon Car msnbc.com Video Player <= longer video interview here As CBS 2's Dana Kozlov reports, the Ewert brothers have a rather advanced science project. But instead of a typical dry ice experiment, Chris and Andrew used batteries and a charger to make their hybrid Toyota Prius get 100 miles per gallon. "My brother and I built this, and car companies should be able to do it, too," Chris Ewert, an electric vehicle enthusiast, said.
Hi Tom..., Toyota's excuse is that its there internal policy to have controlling interest in all the production. And their battery company, like allot of Japanese efforts, is more tactical than strategic. And consequently, the US laboratory born battery companies are somewhat ahead at this time in the developement curve, being more strategic than tactical. But Toyota will not risk using those companies' products, because they do not own those companies. That, and since Chevron/Texaco have the patent rights on the Ovshinski NiMH battery (an outgrowth of GM following the same policy Toyota does, but with the EV1), and have placed dramatic limitations on the gasoline that can be offset with the use of their patent. Toyota had to pay a large settlement in this regard.
Maybe the fact they have to be accountable to their customers and that GM sold the battery technology they used in the EV1 to an oil company.
Very cool. Chris and Andrew have made a lot of great contributions to the most recent version of the Cal-cars open source PHEV conversion. Nice to see them getting some attention for it! Together they have built and are perfecting the CAN control board that takes the closed source CAN-View out of the cal-cars system and adds the improvement of SOC spoofing. They are also working on an open source battery control system, and a monitoring system to put out a graphical representation of the cars activity (as CAN-View does). Rob
