Plug-in Prius Hybrid Stands Up to Curvy Vermont Roads, Tops 100 MPG
Road testing at Vermont’s Green Mountain College on a pair of souped-up plug-in Toyota Prius hybrids has found the cars returning better than 100 miles per gallon in daily commuting. At times, one car topped 140 MPG.
Steven Letendre (pictured above), economics professor and research scientist at GMC, monitored the travels of his colleague James Harding as he drove a plug-in Prius nine miles each way between the college’s campus in Poultney and his home in Middletown Springs during the fall semester. Letendre said he was “amazed” by Harding’s results.
- » See also: US Arpa-E Funding Enlisting Cyanobacteria to Make Fuel For Humans
- » Get CleanTechnica by RSS or sign up by email.
A current Prius can average about 50 MPG. Toyota has said it will bring a plug-in Prius to market in 2009.
Harding drives on Vermont Route 140, a two-lane highway with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. He figures his electric bills went up 60 cents a day when he charged the car, which was converted to a plug-in by a company called Hymotion.
“I was very conscious of the internal display on the dashboard, which tells you when the engine goes from battery power to gas,” he said. “It tends to make you more conscious of the energy the vehicle is using, and instinctively you want to lighten up on the gas pedal as much as possible.”
The cars are owned by Central Vermont Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility. The utility has been promoting and studying the feasibility of plug-in cars in the Green Mountain State. Plug-in hybrid technology, such as the Chevy Volt, has been drawing a lot of attention. However some have raised concerns about what the extra load from charging cars could do to the country’s aging electrical grid.
Vermont’s grid could handle a fairly large number of plug-ins, say Letendre and Richard Watts, of the University of Vermont Transportation Center. They reported in 2007 that the Vermont grid could handle 50,000 plug-ins without any upgrades to the system. The number doubles if drivers recharge at night when grid demand is lower. Aftermarket plug-ins have grown in popularity, and many owners report mileage figures similar to those logged at GMC.
Photo supplied by Green Mountain College.
We could be so much farther ahead if GM hadn’t halted their electric car…
If only GM hadn’t killed an obviously successful product. Oh, except it wasn’t and there is no business motivation as to why an automaker would spend substantial money on a product line just to deliberately want it to fail.
Before Toyota shelved their plug-in RAV4, I read a great article about a fella who just plopped some solar PV panels on his garage and voila, was driving for free.
For urban folks, who often are wasting the most fuel due to gridlock, who often don’t need to drive very far, why couldn’t this be the model of the future?
Carter, Just a point that solar panels, wiring, energy storage, etc. is not free. Good, but not free.
Neither is the garage - we should start considering solar as a necessary infrastructure cost, just like we do standard electrical wiring.
I do see your point, but those are relatively small fixed costs. It would sure be cheaper for society than the cost of our Iraqi occupation fiasco (remember how we were all told the war would “pay for itself with oil revenues”?).
Ultimately, the sun’s energy is free, and as it isn’t going away any time soon, and there’s plenty to go around, we should start utilizing it whenever and whereever possible.