Newswise — Jonathan Sawyer wants to do his part for the environment--and then some. His roof is covered with solar panels, and he has a wind turbine as well. A decade ago he was one of the few people to lease a General Motors EV1, even though GM didn't sell them in Colorado, where Sawyer lives. Later, he bought an all-electric Toyota, the RAV4 EV. So it should come as no surprise that for Sawyer an off-the-line Prius hybrid isn't quite green enough. What he did about it, though, was remarkable.
Last year, the 52-year-old Boulder electrical engineer drove his US $25 000 brand-new black 2008 Toyota Prius directly to Hybrids Plus, also in Boulder, where he wrote another check, for $32 000--to have his shiny new Prius converted into a PHEV.
A plug-in conversion service either replaces the car's original battery pack with one having far higher energy capacity, as Hybrids Plus does, or supplements it, as some other conversion companies do. The car can then travel, in this case, up to 50 kilometers in all-electric mode without switching on the engine. The conversion also adds a charging system that lets an owner recharge that pack by plugging it into a standard household electrical outlet.
The result is a car that can go more than 1000 miles on a single 12-gallon tank of gasoline. And because the Sawyer household often generates more electricity than it needs, Sawyer's per-mile cost is even less than the $0.02 per mile it would be for a typical Colorado family.
It would take more than 300 000 miles of driving for that average family to break even, but conversion costs are coming down even quicker than gas prices are rising. Plug-in hybrids will play a key role in reducing oil dependence and in reducing greenhouse gases. Already Toyota, Ford, and Honda have firm plans for making plug-in hybrids, and more are expected soon. Jonathan Sawyer, of course, already has his.
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