Family takes "The Electric Vehicle Initiative" on the road in Florida
A Tallahassee family is so excited about driving on electricity that they have hit the road in their plug-in Prius for a planned 2,000-mile road trip to share their enthusiasm and inform their fellow Floridians about the benefits of hybrids and electric cars. The Electric Vehicle Initiative, as they're calling it, kicked off at last weekend's Battery Beach Burnout in Jupiter and is scheduled to roll along until the end of March, stopping in every major city in the Sunshine State as well as many towns. Their car is a 2005 Prius which was converted to a plug-in last year and, unlike some others, say they can get 100 mpg with it. At least for the first freshly-juiced 40 miles.
Yesterday had them appearing at the Palm Beach Community College, where they talked with students and had a screening of "Who Killed the Electric Car." If you would like them to stop by your town or if you just want to offer some encouragement, hit them up on their blog. We wish them happy motoring and hope they enjoy a successful trip.
[Source: Florida Electric Auto Association]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gorr 3:01PM (2/25/2009)
You cannot get 100 mpg with this car except when you break at stop signs. And this car is programmed to fully recharge his batteries while driving and so with the added weight it cost more energy to get it moving and when you plug it for 10 hours no electricity go into the battery, so you heat up the battery with steady current destroying the battery. Even for laptop batteries they never invented a smart monitoring system that can measure battery state of charge because they tried many time without success and that's why toyota engineers and other car manufacturers have said that battery don't work good for cars. These batteries are just old technology with limited usage, mainly for back-up power and even then they fade away rapidly. The battery hoax is a goverment mandate to get us breathe fumes for a while, protect big-oil, pollute the land, destroy the economy including flesh technology of any kind.
They fear hydrogen power because it give power for centuries and politicians are proposing death for everyone with the recent law of barack mandating studies for the human genome and abortion.
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solution 8:57PM (2/25/2009)
Holy crap gorr, could you just disappear? Seriously! You are always first to negatively comment on every story on here. In your comment you demonstrated that you know nothing about how this converted Prius works. You don't even bother looking up info about Hymotion. Can we get a mod to ban this person? Get a life and get off your computer, assuming you're a human and not software bot.
For those that are complaining that this car only gets 99+ MPG for 20 - 40 miles, what's stopping them from doubling or tripling battery quantity? Based on 5 KWh lithium battery capacity specification, and knowing that A123 cell weights 0.071 Kg with capacity of 7.6 Wh, lithium-only should weigh 102 pounds in the Hymotion unit. So, double the amount of lithium to 204 pounds, and you get 40 - 80 miles of 99+ MPG range. Still not happy? Okey then, let's triple it to 306 lbs and get 60 - 120 miles of 99+ MPG range per charge. Satisfied?
In reality, not many people need this much range per day. Most of you drive less than 40 miles per day on average. And that's what matters. AVERAGE. That equals 14,600 miles per year, which is about right for average miles driven per year by average U.S. citizen.
I have spoken with Florida Power and Light electric company employee, and they have few of these plug-ins in their fleet. He said one of their drivers gets over 80 MPG all the time. All he does is not drive over 65 MPH the highway. Lets assume he would get 50 MPG in unconverted Prius. In one year he saves 110 gallons of fuel with Hymotion converted Prius over stock car. Over 10 years, which should be the life of this battery, that's 1100 gallons. That equals 10 Tonnes or 21,000 pounds of CO2 saved and $2,300 in gas savings at today's price. If gas was $4/gal, then it would be about $4,600 of money saved.
Chris M 11:55PM (2/25/2009)
Gorr, the car obviously does work, as they've had no trouble driving it all around Florida, and it gives them excellent mileage. See comments by them below.
Solution, you should realize that just about every successful blog with open comments gets a few ranting nutters, and with gorr, Autoblog Green has a real champion kook! Gorr is opposed to anything that doesn't run on "green algae" or "an onboard electrolyzer". He really thinks that a car can run on nothing but water run through an onboard electrolysis unit, like scammers Stan Meyers and D Dingle pretend to do. It doesn't do any good to point out that Meyers was convicted of fraud, and Meyer's "water car" didn't work, and such a thing isn't possible as it violates the laws of physics, gorr is oblivious to evidence and reality. He thinks the "electrolyser water car" is biblically ordained, because the bible said Moses divided the waters!
If Gorr won't let little things like "Facts" or "Reality" interfere with his delusions, you can be sure that insults or threats will have no effect. "Banning" wouldn't do much good, he'd just change his alias and come back for more abuse.
mike 10:49PM (3/05/2009)
i saw the car myself i am a student at seminole community college and i personally confirm that the vehicle is capable of 115.6 mpg. it has a a123 lithium battery pack installed on top of the factory batteries so it is capable of the additional mileage.
Mike Z 3:10PM (2/25/2009)
Given the recent post regarding the disappointing results of converted Priusi, is the 100mpg claim really a valid one of to make anymore?
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GoodCheer 3:46PM (2/25/2009)
I don't see how the claim could be "invalid". It might not be statistically significant compared to the ~50,000 miles in the Oregon study (or was it Washington?).
The difference might be in the driving behaviors of people who use company cars vs. people who are "excited to be driving on electricity".
Mike Z 4:02PM (2/25/2009)
But my that logic, car makers should be able to advertise the mpg of a car based on what a hypermiler can get out of it.
Fran & The EVI 8:03PM (2/25/2009)
Domenick, What a fun & interesting writing style you have! You are right that we are excited about our trip to help Floridians learn about cool EVs and PHEVs. I have complained about environmental problems for waaay too many years. Now we are on the road, spending our retirement dollars for something that could really make a difference. Now that is a great investment.
A response to's Mike Z's comments:
Yes, Mike, the comments by Good Cheer are very accurate.
When I drive our converted Prius I can get 40 miles of "99.9 mpg" on a full charge. My husband can get about 25 miles at 99.,9 mpg. The difference is that I am The Queen of Hypermiling.;-) My husband likes to have his air conditioning, and he likes to be fast off the line sometimes when he starts off from a stop. So Good Cheer's comments are definitely correct.
The difference might be in the driving behaviors of people who use company cars vs. people who are "excited to be driving on electricity".
The Electric Vehicle Initiative
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James 8:59AM (2/26/2009)
Is the irony of wasting gas on a 2000 mile trip to talk to people about saving gas somehow missed here?
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rj 9:29AM (2/26/2009)
So how much does it cost to converter?
If it costs $6000 - to $7500 and you "saved" $2100 in gas ... you are still $3900 to $5400 in the hole ... assuming the electricity to recharge the battery was "free" and not counting the cost of financing the additional $6 - 7.5 K in purchase price for the term of the loan.
http://www.automotivedesignline.com/blogs/archive/index.jhtml;jsessionid=D2KLP35L211EAQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN?start=5&howMany=4
—he added they shouldn't expect any payback and it's only for people who want to make a statement.
The question is, is that statement, "I'm green" or "l'm foolish"?
If you want to spend your money to do something nice for the environment that is your choice. If you just want to look like you are doing something nice this will fit the bill. If you truly care for the environment there are other ways to get more niceness for the same ammount of cash, but putting insulation in your attic or a cogenerator in your basement does not have the look at me I'm cool thing that a car with a giant sticker on it does.
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fran 4:41PM (3/01/2009)
I will need to be kind of quick in responding to the great posts in the last few days. If you go to our blog you will see many of the answers to questions and concerns of the preceding posts. http://eviblog.fleaa.org
1. We have never claimed that we think that the $10,400 investment in the A 123 could pay for itself, given today's gas costs. Now, here is the big difference. When we show the car at demos, we tell people that right now this conversion will not pay for itself as an investment for an individual family, but (1) ...If you count the billions that we have spent to try to protect the flow of oil to this country, going electric is a great investment in freeing our country from that need to do that. (2) We encourage those who can afford the investment to make it, even though it is not cost effective, in order to help bring the cost of production down by helping to provide some "economy of scale" to the battery market.More later, from on the road, The EVI