Car and Driver: Are plug-in hybrids the next big thing?
Oct 29, 2005 (From the CalCars-News archive)

Editor-in-chief Casaba Csere is a highly-respected automotive journalist,
and it's great that mainstream car magazines are starting to pay attention.
At the same time, in promoting PHEVs, we can all do better in
distinguishing between what exists now -- after-market conversions -- and
what could exist when car-makers build PHEVs. (Meanwhile, on everyone's
favorite subject, batteries, I have no original source, but others have
quoted Toyota as saying that if a Prius battery pack ever needed
replacement, its price to the customer would be under $3,000 today, far
less in the future.)

I agree with Csere that we need credible road tests. So far we have only
one by a qualified third party, engineer/auto critic Dan Neil of the LA Times,
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news/message/85

http://www.caranddriver.com/article.asp?section_id=27&article_id=10123
The Steering Column
Are plug-in hybrids the next big thing?
BY CSABA CSERE
November 2005

Last May, there was a short article in BusinessWeek magazine about
something called a "plug in" hybrid. Within the same week, there was
another mention in the Wall Street Journal. Then in June, Thomas L.
Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, the author of
a current bestselling commentary on world affairs, and a man frequently
described as "influential," wrote a column in which he extolled plug-in
hybrids. He suggested that they got "about 500 miles per gallon of gasoline."

Then I read that James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, has endorsed
these plug-in hybrids. So has a former secretary of the treasury, George
Shultz, and so did Frank Gaffney, a former deputy assistant secretary of
defense for nuclear forces. What was this technology that seemingly came
out of nowhere to draw such prominent support so quickly?

The idea is pretty simple. Take a Toyota Prius hybrid and install the "EV
only" switch that is standard on Japanese and European Priuses but absent
on American models. Pressing this switch forces the Prius to run only on
its electric motor and precludes the gasoline motor from starting up. Then
add some additional battery capacity to increase the Prius's range in this
electric-only mode. Finally, you install a charger so that when you park
the Prius, you can plug it in to make sure the enlarged battery pack is
fully charged for your next journey.

The result is an electric car without the usual range limitation: If you
must travel farther than the range provided by the battery, you simply take
the car out of the "EV only" mode and let the gasoline engine propel you as
far as you wish to go.

A person with a short commute could drive his or her modified Prius without
ever starting the gas engine. Even if the gasoline engine were needed, the
mileage would be spectacular. For example, if the plug-in Prius could
travel 10 miles on the battery alone, on a 20-mile trip it would need to
use the gas engine for only 10 miles. Ten miles of gasoline usage would
burn about 0.2 gallon of gas. Dividing the 20-mile total trip by 0.2 gallon
equals 100 miles per gallon.

If that 0.2 gallon is a mix of 20-percent gasoline and 80-percent ethanol,
the modified car gets 500 miles per gallon of gasoline. This is how
Friedman came up with the spectacular mileage he quoted.

Although the electricity used to charge the plug-in battery would likely be
generated from a fossil-fuel-fired power plant, both the Electric Power
Research Institute and the California Air Resources Board have calculated
that air pollution and carbon-dioxide emissions would fall substantially
using this approach. Furthermore, driving on electric power would cost
about 75 percent less than driving on gas.

It all sounds theoretically feasible, and after seeing so many mentions of
these plug-in hybrids, I didn't understand how this technology had achieved
such prominence without ever showing up on Car and Driver's radar screen.

Moreover, there were a few questions that none of the articles had
addressed. What was the top speed of a Prius running on its electric motor
alone? What kind of range was possible in this electric-only mode? How much
weight did the additional battery add? How much space did it occupy? And
how much did the extra battery cost? This is a particularly critical
question given that hybrid cars already cost a good deal more than
traditional ones and the majority of that added cost is in the stock
battery (a replacement battery for the Prius costs about $6000). Could the
Prius charge its supplementary battery pack from its gasoline engine on a
long trip? What did these jury-rigged modifications do to the admirably
seamless operation of the unmodified Prius? What effect would the mods have
on the Prius's stock battery life and warranty?

Clearly, we needed to get our hands on one of these cars and see for
ourselves. Last May, I assigned technical editor Dave VanderWerp to the
case. He quickly did some research and discovered that most of the plug-in
hybrids were—what a surprise—in California. So VanderWerp handed off the
assignment to Aaron Robinson, our other tech editor, based in L.A.

Robinson was busy and didn't devote himself 24/7 to this job, so he handed
it over to editor-at-large Barry Winfield, who also made slow progress.

By late July, I was losing patience. Here was a technology that had
achieved national prominence, and yet we couldn't track down a single
vehicle to try out. I told Winfield to make it his top priority to find one
of these machines and get himself behind the wheel for a drive.

Here's what he reported: "The developers of plug-in hybrids are extremely
unwilling to have their babies tested by any means right now. Greg Hanssen
of EnergyCS (who responded to my first call by saying, 'Car and Driver? Pat
Bedard? Oh, no, he's extremely battery unfriendly!') says they will have
some second-generation cars—they will be more 'autonomous,' i.e., actually
able to be driven by lay people—for the local AQD [air-quality district] in
about six weeks' time [early October]."

Winfield did learn that the maximum speed in the EV-only mode is 34 mph and
that acceleration is modest, as the electric motor develops no more than 28
horsepower when running on batteries alone. He concluded that "the
plug-in-hybrid developers are happy to have the uncritical support of
various newspaper journalists who blithely reprint the claims of 250 mpg,
but as soon as you say fuel consumption or performance test, they're not
having any of it."

Toyota has been somewhat befuddled by this mutation of its Prius. Hanging
additional batteries and electronic controllers onto the Prius's
meticulously developed powertrain must make the engineers in Nagoya cringe.
Moreover, the company goes out of its way to explain that its hybrids don't
need to be plugged in. Now, these altered versions directly contradict that
message.

Meanwhile, DaimlerChrysler is looking at building a run of 40 plug-in
hybrid vans for corporate fleet usage to test the concept. And EnergyCS,
one of the companies Winfield contacted, plans to start converting Priuses
to plug-in operation next year for $12,000 per car.

My recommendation: Wait for a credible road test before you plunk down your
cash for one.