dynomometer prius recharge
 

just a (semi) silly idea,

I'm trying to sort out how to recharge the standard prius pack simply and cheaply and have a few miles of EV only with recharge.

So, why not use regen? :) fab up a motor and a dyno looking device in the garage, park on it and spin the wheels till the battery is fully charged?

Combined with an injector kill switch (or ev mode switch if not too painful), and some way to shut it all down when charged, might be the simplest to implement phev, good for a couple miles to the store.

Is there a link to a locost prius traction battery diy charger somewhere? I suppose making a custom nimh charger for it wouldn't be too awful either.

Sorry to say, but the Prius can barely eek out a mile in EV mode on a desolate strip of road going 5 mph. Even if you baby it in EV mode whilst driving normal city speeds you probalby won't get 1/2 mile out of it. You need to increase your pack capacity to do any PHEV type driving.

Huh, any links/tests? (so much battery talk, hard to find anything useful)

Per here they are getting 4 miles/kwh and the prius is maybe 1kwh
http://www.wmich.edu/mfe/mrc/greenma...erformance.pdf

More battery is better, no argument there.

The Prius pack is right around 1kWh, you are correct. However, You can only charge up to 80% before the motors will just start spinning the engine to bleed off power, and you can only discharge it to 55% before the engine kicks in to recharge the pack. I know these numbers because I have an enginer PHEV kit in my Prius and I have a Scangauge II with X-gauge features to allow me to monitor battery SOC. So, out of your 1kWh you can only use 25% or 250 Wh. At most that is going to get you 1 mile. My personal experience is you won't even get that much.

k, thx for the info, I know what to expect. I will probably do some more tests after the EV button install before bothering to sort out a wall charger, but I wont keep my hopes up :)

Even though his idea won't work as intended it may have merit, what interests me is the spinning motors.

If you had a pack interupt similar to the Insightish one developed for other reasons, could you fully charge the pack, hit the disconnect and rocket off during your cold and most fuel inefficient run?

I would think this would help ease winter startup FE since spinning the motor while driving down the road might be helpfull :)

Cheers