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Infinite Miles Per Gallon
August 10, 2007

Actually my math may be a little rusty.  Upon futher reflection, I think the denominator in the MPG calculation is ‘0′, so actually MPG would be undefined.  Either way, that’s great news for fuel economy.  How you ask?  Well, Toyota recently announced that it was testing plug-in Prius hybrids in Japan and the U.S.  (specifically at UC Berkeley and UC Irvine).  You can read more about the plug-in Prius hybrid here. Tuesday’s (8/7/07) Wall Street Journal also had a story on the plug-in Prius as well as some converters who will modify your Prius (or Hybrid Escape) now for $10-15,000. Check out Calcars and A123 Systems. Plug-in hybrids use your home’s electric current to recharge the batteries powering the electric motor. Depending on the output of the electric motor, it can exclusively power the car up to freeway speeds for a useable distance– say 5 to as much as 40 miles. When the battery gets low, the gas engine kicks in as a generator to recharge the battery and you continue on electric power. Make it home before the gas engine kicks in and your gas consumption is 0. Sounds great you say? Well, there is a catch. The nickel metal hydride batteries currently used in hybrids can’t take the extreme cycling that a plug-in requires (fully charging and depleting on a daily, or more frequent, basis). Nor can they store the energy needed to power the stronger electric engine used by the plug-in. Lithium ion batteries are much more compact, store more energy and can be cycled repeatedly, but they tend to produce a lot of heat– remember the flaming laptops that were banned from planes last summer? No one wants to see a Prius “pulling a Pinto”– read flaming– so more work remains to be done. I wouldn’t run down to your Toyota dealer just yet. In an interesting twist, GM is indicating that they may have their own plug-in hybrid, the Chevy Volt available by 2010 . Wow, it actually looks cool and if the interior is not like other GM products (that is, cheap and ugly), they might just have a winner. Perhaps there’s hope for GM yet.

Charles the Car Guy

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