Want to be first on your block with a $50,000 Toyota Prius?

PLUG-IN HYBRIDS
Making green cars greener costs a bundle
With $24,000 add-on, plug-in Toyota Prius is mostly for rich
Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 21, 2007

Want to be the first on your block with a $50,000 Toyota Prius?

Head to Hybrids Plus in Boulder, Colo., and leave your Prius with their technicians. Go skiing or something, come back in three or four days with a check for $24,000 and you will have one of the nation's very few plug-in hybrids that should easily get 100 miles per gallon.

A plug-in is an ordinary hybrid with an electric motor and gasoline engine that has been modified -- usually by upgrading its battery pack or adding more batteries -- so it can go a lot farther on electric power than it normally does. On Thursday, a study funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a power-industry group lined up behind advocates in dubbing plug-ins the car of the future, albeit the distant future.

That study said greenhouse gas emissions and domestic oil consumption would drop sharply if plug-in hybrid technology became widespread by 2050. Mass production of the vehicles, however, is years away.

Still, Bay Area Prius lovers can have their very own supergreen car right now -- for a price.

A normal Prius retails at a Toyota showroom for about $23,000, but frequently sells for more because the cars are in such demand.

Hybrids Plus is one of the few outfits in the country that, for another $24,000 or so, will remove the nickel metal hydride battery that comes with the Prius and replace it with a more powerful lithium ion battery.

"We're converting cars for private customers," said Hybrids Plus CEO Carl Lawrence. "We have a guy coming in Thursday. He's buying the extension pack that doubles the range. That's an additional $8,000" -- making it a $60,000 Prius.

"We've been selling to whoever walks in the door and wants one," Lawrence said. Mostly, he noted, they're rich.

Most of the 50-odd plug-in hybrids that have been manufactured in the United States and Canada have been put into use as demonstrators for government fleets and for utilities that want to show how efficient a mostly electric-powered car can be.

Living with a plug-in hybrid, drivers say, can have its quirks.

"The first thing you notice is that it's quiet," said Sven Thesen, a supervisor in the Clean Transportation Program at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Thesen frequently uses a plug-in hybrid Prius that is in the PG&E fleet.

"If you're under 34 mph and not gassing it -- that's a silly term for an electric vehicle -- it's silent," Thesen said. "It's more quiet than your normal Prius."

At home, all one needs to recharge the car is an extension cord and an outlet in the garage. On the road, however, it's a different story.

"There's a plug mounted in the bumper," Thesen said. "When I'm on the road and I take the car to a hotel, I drive around the parking lot looking for a Coke machine. When I find one, I park close to it, so I can plug in where the Coke machine is. ... Then it takes six to eight hours to charge."

PG&E is using a plug-in hybrid made by Energy CS in Southern California. The car, which has been dubbed "Sparky," is driven around the Bay Area and taken to public demonstrations mainly as an education tool, Thesen said.

Plug-in hybrids are an infant industry -- even the word industry implies more organization than is commonly found in the plug-in world. There are all kinds of pitfalls and problems that crop up in the daily research and development of plug-ins.

"We're definitely studying the plug-in hybrid as an addition to our current hybrid system," said Bill Kwong, a Toyota spokesman. Toyota has made a major commitment to hybrid technology, both for its Toyota cars and its upscale line of Lexus vehicles.

"Right now, hybrid is the best combination of energy and convenience," Kwong said. "But there are still challenges with battery technology."

Over the past few years, there have been reports of lithium ion batteries in laptop computers heating up and, in some cases, catching fire. Kwong said that in addition to making sure any vehicle sold by Toyota is safe -- the automaker is not interested in selling cars that could easily catch fire -- the company wants to ensure that the batteries have a long life. Hence, long research.

And would-be modifiers of Priuses, beware: Kwong said modifying a Prius with new batteries renders the car's power train warranty "null and void."

At the California Air Resources Board, they're just as cautious about plug-ins as they are at Toyota.

"We think there's a definite role in the future for plug-in hybrids, but there are still some hurdles to overcome in developing a battery that will last the life of the vehicle," said board spokeswoman Karen Caesar. "Today they are still considered experimental. We are not encouraging people to disassemble their Priuses to turn them into plug-ins."

Maybe so, but they do draw the curious.

"If I stop the vehicle, I have people pulling up beside me," Thesen said. "They see the 100 mpg sign on the side of the car and they say, 'What did you do to get 100 mpg?' It's everyone from Prius owners to techie drivers. People like it because they don't have to go to the gas station as often.

"Plugging in in the evening and unplugging in the morning is easy," Thesen said, "compared with the hassle of going to a gas station."
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More information on plug-in hybrids is available at the Web site of CalCars, a nonprofit group in the Bay Area that promotes the vehicles:
www.calcars.org