I'm looking for information on just topping off the traction battery with a plug in charger. What effect would it have. It would seem like an inexpensive low impact add on. I see this was asked before about 3 years ago but no recent activity. I can not find anything with Google. Is there a fundamental problem with topping off the traction battery with a plug in charger or is the improve so absurdly marginal that nobody bothers with it. I would think that even if the later were the case somebody would sell one, I've seen no shortage of marginally ethical "green" vendors out there.
"Absurdly marginal" is an eloquent way to put it, and quite true as far as any real advantages. . _H*
there is a good reason wy 3 years ago this question is asked and now your asking it again.... its useless. to small of a diferents
I would love to have some sort of plug in charge for mine. My situation is this: I take kids to school (two in one direction and one the other), get home and park. I usually have 2-3 battery bars at this time. I sleep during school hours (about 6 hours, perfect time to get some battery bars back). I pick the kids up from school and still end up with about 2-3 battery bars when done. My drop off/pick up routes usually charge the traction battery a couple of times as the route consists of long uphill/downhill roads where I live. I am holding my breath for some sort of add-on feature to come along.
$19.97 at Walmart!, Just kidding. My guess would be a couple of hundred dollars or less. I'm not one to look at what investment costs set me back, I look at instant savings. In this case, My traction battery would be more charged from the start, obviously using the ICE less.
Keep in mind you would have to ensure the charger doesn't charge the battery more than the 80% Toyota wants. More would surly void your battery warranty and would probably shorten the battery life. Then there is the problem of convincing the HSD that the extra charge is actually -in- there. Good luck finding an inexpensive charger that can do that for a 200VDC battery. I could design one fairly easily that could reliably put the charge in, but that couldn't tell the system it's in there. So assuming you -could- find one to do that, you would be adding about 20% charge -most- of the time (the Prius tries to keep the battery at about 60% charge). Going from about 60% charge to about 40% charge (where the HSD drops you out of EV mode) will give you 1-1.5 mi. of travel. So about that for 20% charge. So you'd be adding 1-1.5 mi. of EV capability for a total of 2-3 mi. There is hope for you, however. There are aftermarket EV systems you can add that will at least triple your EV range. They include chargers. Cost varies from about $5000 to about $12,000. They are discussed ad-infinitum on this forum. Search for EV conversions.
Yeah, but that one mile would get me to a long downhill road, thus charging the traction battery. And yes, I do know that in this case, what goes down must go up, and going uphill I get 25 MPG and going downhill indicates 100 MPG so what's the average???
It is hard to find/design a proper charger to maintain the battery in good condition. It is too risky to invest a charger for getting "absurdly marginal" gain. Have you ever considered the warranty issue? Ken@Japan
If I understand correctly, the ICE is going to start anyway to warm up whether the battery needs changing or not. So in this case I don't see any benefit at all. EV conversion would be the best bet as mentioned before.
These chargers are very expensive. we have two where I work. Also, not much help to any MPG gains due to the fact that this battery provides not much overall capacity. If you want to invest, there are companies that retrofit a large lithium battery, new electronics, etc. It then runs down this battery (@25-40 miles or so) then you are back to a normal hybrid. Trust me, you will never see the gains at the other end of that one.
The battery was over charged. http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...e-mod-under-way-bristol-uk-33.html#post887261 Ken@Japan
