Quote:
Originally Posted by evric
Thank you for your comments. Where did you get the 50/50 petrol/electric usage figure from? (hopefully not from my website)
That figure would be correct for the standard Prius. My conversion now would be more like 25/75 petrol/electric.
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The stock Prius might use it's electric motors 50% of the time, but 100% of that energy came from petrol. Compared to my car (and most other G2 models), you've halved your petrol consumption, so it's safe to assume that half of your car's energy now comes from the grid.
If electricity is free, then your fuel costs have come down to 2.5c/ km. In which case the payback would be around 270,000km. But electricity has a cost too (even if you have solar panels - you probably do- and produce excess power you'll get money back from the electricity supplier).
I've calculated around 4c/km (as have others) is the cost to fuel a Nissan Leaf. So if you run 50% on EV at 4c/km and 50% on petrol at 5c/km. You're only saving 0.5c/km.
That's a 1.4million km payback
3c/km for EV power is the best case scenario if you live where electricity is cheap or have a super efficient EV.
The only way I can see myself doing the plug in conversion now is if I did something like a 2kWh conversion, enough for ~10km of range, that would be enough for 100% EV usage on 95% of my Prius trips. So I probably use around one tank of petrol a year, but still, I'd only be saving 1c/km.
I realize that money saving isn't really the point of a project like this, but it still has to be considered. Just as a comparison I'm contemplating swapping the 4.0l I6 in my Jeep for a 6.2l LS3. People who've done this swap have reported a 2l/100km improvement in economy (going from my current 12 down to 9.5l/100km). That's a 2.7c/km saving but still 370,000km until payback...