Before I left the hotel at BWI this morning I caught a glimps of a CNN report on two brothers who took a 2nd gen prius and made their own version of a plug-in. They added an extra battery pack in the cargo area and a plug on the lower left of the rear bumper. With the extra battery power they can go farther without using the gas engine. The report stated they were getting 100 mpg. One of the brothers was an electrical engineer and the other was in college for computer software. They said they did it to spur one of the big auto manufacturer's into doing the same thing only better and cheaper. The cost of modifying their prius was about $3000 according to the report. Anyone else see this? I'm interested in doing the same to mine once they pass the 100,000 mark. Ron
I saw it too, which is why I didn't get to work on time. Wish they went into more details. Couldn't read what it said on the batteries. But why didn't the story even mention A123 or Hymotion? It left the impression that no one is even trying.
The Ewert brothers are working on/with the cal-cars open source project. They are in the middle of developing several new boards for the latest rev of the project. PriusPlus - EAA-PHEV Rob
I saw that before work this morning. These guys were acting like they invented the electric car. (Or at least that they were the first ones to come up with the idea to make a plug-in hybrid.)
