Toyota Prius Doubles as Emergency Generator

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Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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An ice storm knocked out power in Harvard, MA for several days and instead of fleeing to a powered area, Prius owner John Sweeney fired up his hybrid. Sweeney said he ran several appliances and lights for three days on a mere five gallons of gas. Quite resourceful.

“When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius…These inverters are available for about $100 many places online,” he wrote.
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<snicker>

I have viewed this forum via laptop and a a/c power converter with a k-car providing the 12v power during a blackout, old news brother!
 
What inverter did he use? Most i've seen only support around 5amp if your lucky, dunno what kinda appliances can be run on that low amperage, surely not a microwave, since I can't cook i'd be dead without my microwave ;)
 
Yawn. GM hybrid pickup trucks have had inverters built in for several years. Move along. Nothing to see here.
 
I'm jerking off to this just because it involved a Prius.
 
Prius is such a joke. Toyota conned the govt into helping people buy the pos's
 
PsyKo[H];1033512963 said:
Or you could get a used Geo Metro, get almost the same mileage, and have enough left to put down on a house. ;)
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Except it's a Toyota and is build to last, whereas a Geo Metro is the POS. :p
 
JaYp146 said:
It's the highest rated of all the hybrids and oftentimes gets 50 MPG. POS?
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it costs more environmentally to build, run, and maintain a prius over it's life than it would a similiar gas powered car.


Replace a big v8 in an suv and get 50+mpg, or get the fuck out.
 
Martyr said:
it costs more environmentally to build, run, and maintain a prius over it's life than it would a similiar gas powered car.


Replace a big v8 in an suv and get 50+mpg, or get the fuck out.
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Yeah, because large, heavy, gas inefficient vehicles are environmentally practical ... ;)
 
i would be very careful saying a prius is built better then a geo metro... the metro is not a bad car for the price...
 
My IQ dropped from reading this thread. I think studying the texture patterns of fecal matter smeared on the walls would have been more enlightening.
 
techrat said:
My IQ dropped from reading this thread. I think studying the texture patterns of fecal matter smeared on the walls would have been more enlightening.
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Those who write upon these walls
roll their shit in little balls.
And those who read these words of wit
eat those little balls of shit.
 
It was running off the 12v battery used toi start the engine, etc. NOT the 180V hybrid battery.

At first I thought maybe the guy "hacked" into the hybridness, but ah no.

So ANY car can do the same feat of magic.... big fking deal. :eek::rolleyes::p
 
JaYp146 said:
It's the highest rated of all the hybrids and oftentimes gets 50 MPG. POS?
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yes, considering it does more environmental damage than a hummer just being built. Kyles one environmentally friendly SOB! :p
 
JaYp146 said:
Yeah, because large, heavy, gas inefficient vehicles are environmentally practical ... ;)
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Actually Hybrids are more damaging to the environment then a Hummer if you have done the research.

Just look into what it takes to make the battery pack alone and then what it takes to replace when it is worn out.
 
4b5eN+EE said:
yes, considering it does more environmental damage than a hummer just being built. Kyles one environmentally friendly SOB! :p
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And let's not bring up the nastiness involved in getting rid of those batteries when they are spent.

Hydrogen is where it is at. Hybrid cars are jerking all these folks off. So smug they are too stupid to see that it is not a solution. If anything, this hybrid BS has hurt the movement to alternative fuels. STOP SPENDING YOUR MONEY ON THIS SHIT YOU GODDAMN DUMB PEOPLE AND COMPANIES.
 
Around here having a hybrid means you get to drive in the carpool lane with only one person in the car. If I ever got one I'd do it more for that reason than anything having to do with the environment.

xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
It was running off the 12v battery used toi start the engine, etc. NOT the 180V hybrid battery.

At first I thought maybe the guy "hacked" into the hybridness, but ah no.

So ANY car can do the same feat of magic.... big fking deal. :eek::rolleyes::p
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It did say something about "only using 5 gallons of gas". You could pull power from the 12v battery in any car, but at some point you would have to turn the car on and run it for a while to keep the battery charged. Perhaps that is the point where the hybrid would have the advantage?
 
i'd go for japaneese cars with no hybrid, i'm actually working saturdays as an post man, gazoline powered suzuki grand vitara is small compared to the american cars.
V6 2.8 Litre, we spend 100 usd every 2nd day on just petrol! jeez.

Our little opel combo gets refilled every 2nd week and it cost 62 usd. remember norwegian prices here, but the amount an big car uses is just hilarious! and i do my work 13% faster in an opel combo than in a suzuki grand vitara... not to mention, space for more in the combo even though its smaller!

do you guys need an V8, people here cannot afford owning an 4 litre old cherooke lol.
bigger isnt always better.
Hybrid doesnt mean envorimental friendly.

and all theese car things is such an envorimental question over here, and well. all knows bio disel is such a bad thing, hybrids, naa, new smaller cars, or new in general is good!
 
RogueTrip said:
What inverter did he use? Most i've seen only support around 5amp if your lucky, dunno what kinda appliances can be run on that low amperage, surely not a microwave, since I can't cook i'd be dead without my microwave ;)
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Go to most any truck stop or Sam's Club and you can find models from 75 to 3000 watts. 1500 is enough to run a microwave, or a space heater, or some lights, DVD player and a CRT Tv. They had a fireplace to boot. This was not much of a feat of ingenuity.

Why they are making such a big deal about it being a Prius, when any economy car, from a fricken Yugo to a, VW Rabbit, to an over priced Prius, could have accomplished the same thing is a mystery to me. Well except that the Eco idiots love the Prius, even though it is worse for the environment over it's lifetime than most gas vehicle.
 
Unless you're towing something or carry a ton or two of cargo a v8's generally overkill, the v8 gives alot of extra carrying capacity before you start wallowing like a pig. The difference between an I4 and V6 is very beneficial when having to merge into highway traffic on a short ramp. Once you're at highway speed it doesn't matter much but the extra acceleration is very helpful in getting your car aligned with a gap.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueMotion

"The BlueMotion Polo and Ibiza Ecomotive use a special 1.4 L diesel engine which achieves 3.9 L/100 km (72 mpg-imp/60 mpg-US) while producing just 99 grams of CO2 per kilometre. Both figures are lower than the hybrid Toyota Prius"

VW get it here in Canada (ton's of consumer diesel pumps at gas stations) and you have a sale.
 
PsyKo[H];1033512963 said:
Or you could get a used Geo Metro, get almost the same mileage, and have enough left to put down on a house. ;)
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or you can get hit by a small vehicle and get crushed like a tin can in your geo metro.. sorry.. ill take the prius or any other hybrid vehicle over driving a tin can geo metro any day..


and the only thing the government gives people is a tax write off which you cant blame toyota for.. that was all Al Gore and his sorry hypocritical, I want to help save the planet yet i own a gigantic house that uses 3 times more electricity then the avg home owner..
 
I've done the opposite of this . . . charged a dead car battery with the 12V from a PC psu.
 
He would be much smarter to get a 1500-3000w generator and stash it in his basement. You could even install a cut-over box to allow certain outlets in the house to be powered from a central generator. I have a 1000w two stroke I take camping. I use an APC line conditioner on the output so I don't damage any electronics.
 
Man, some of you people might know computers but you know dick about cars, energy, and transport.

It costs more, enviro..etc etc.. to run a Prius over a gas powered equivalent car? What is the equivalent of a Prius? Hint: There isn't any. Find a car that you can fit a jacuzzi tub in the back and close the hatch, then you'll have an equivalent car as far as storage goes. The Corolla is not an equivalent car.

Prius does more environmental damage than a Hummer? Yikes man, double check any of those stories, they all lead back to one particular marketing..ahem "research" group that has been paid by certain industries to put out a study on this, plus they refuse to release their overall data, in fact they threaten lawsuits to anyone who does release it. Sorry, just because you read it on the internet does not make it true.

Hydrogen is where it's at? YIKES! Where is hydrogen going to come from? Hydrogen is a battery folks, and a really shitty battery at that, the energy density of even compressed hydrogen is so shitty it's not funny.

While I do agree that hybrids are a bit of a crutch, some of them are nice crutches, the Honda Insight and Toyota prius were good examples of technology built around the hybrid system, most other Hybrids are simply stuff crammed into existing cars, and gee what a wonder that they're not that much better than their non-hybrid counter parts (Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, etc.. all are guilty of this). IMO electric is the way to go, either have two classes of cars "commuter" and long haul, so you don't have to worry about range limitations, or have a universal battery swap out, where instead of waiting for a recharge, you simply swap your old batteries for new fresh charged ones. However the battery technology is not safely there as a cheap alternative... because lets be honest the American public are fucking retards when it comes to worrying about anything if it's going to cost more, just look at the guy who compared a Geo Metro to a Prius.. I mean shit you can park a Metro perpendicular to a curb and probably not stick out further than most parking parallel... why not compare a motorcycle, or a scooter if you're going to compare apples to oranges, I mean hell a scooter gets way better mileage and is much cheaper!
 
just about any hatchback will fit the same crap as a prius....nice try though.
 
Hybrids take the internal combustion engine and make the energy it produces go a lot further. That's about all.
 
There're R&D grade batteries (IIRC an enhanced LION variant) that can take a 90% charge in <5minutes. Plugging a bigass power cable in at the gas station to recharge them wouldn't take any longer than filling your tank.
 
gdonovan said:
Actually Hybrids are more damaging to the environment then a Hummer if you have done the research.

Just look into what it takes to make the battery pack alone and then what it takes to replace when it is worn out.
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Dude. That has been debunked so many times it is not even funny.
 
sfsuphysics said:
most other Hybrids are simply stuff crammed into existing cars, and gee what a wonder that they're not that much better than their non-hybrid counter parts (Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, etc.. all are guilty of this).
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Honda? But you cite the Insight. :) The Civic hybrid gets 47mpg mixed driving ,real world, not even trying. I own one. Well, my wife does. But there you have it. The hybrid system is the same as that used in the Insight but the loss of the moon-buggy aero and addition actual usable capacity kills MPG. When it's function over form you get designs like the Prius and the new (and old) Insight. I prefer the Civic Hybrid because it doesn't scream "Hey! I'm a hybrid driving tool and will not hesitate to tell you how awesome I am for driving one!"

Now the Accord hybrid was a joke.

I agree hydrogen is silly for cars. You either burn it directly. Which is dumb since the energy density is just not there. Or you use it in a fuel cell to make electricity. Which is even dumber where you expend electricity to crack water to make hydrogen to make it back into electricity. In the case of the FCX Clarity the power from the fuel cell then goes into a LiION battery to in turn power the motor. Why use a fuel cell to begin with? I think Rube Goldberg might have an award for Honda on that one. There's a reason the FCX Clarity is a $600/month lease to celebrities only vehicle: it's an overly expensive greenwashing PR device to distract you from the Ridgeline and other Honda guzzlers.

Interim technologies like the various hybrids and the even more aggressive Volt drive-train will provide a good compromise until pure electrics get practical. And by practical I mean: me, the wife, both kids and all our crap will fit in it for a trip to Disneyland from Seattle, stopping at neat places in between and not having to stay overnight every 200 miles to charge it.

Now as to the point of this original post: so what. The guy hooked an inverter to a 12v battery. At no point was the hybrid system in the loop. But hey it was a Prius so it must be amazing or something. Silly news people, always being clueless.
 
I'm going to say NO to the whole Hydrogen thing.

Aint gonna happen, we'd have to replace the infrastructure and the vehicles, costing $trillions.

Plug in electric and hybrid are where the reality rests. Adding 480Volt charging stations to the current gas station infrastructure would be a trivial act. Gas stations replace the gas pumps on a regular basis, so converting to gas/electric pump/fillers would be easy to implement and only an incremental added expense.

Making the electric car/hybrid "charge-able" in a few minutes rather than hours is the key, along with usable range, to making the transition smooth and frankly, do most consumers give a shit whats actually under the hood?

Sure WE like the roar of a big V8, but seriously, do most commuters and soccor moms really give a shit? No. They just want to get from A to B in the manner they've grown used to.

You drive and drive, and when the "tank" is low, you pull in and get more "GO" and then drive more.

I think you will see soon, a breakthrough in parts of the electric car design that will make this a reality very soon. The X-prize contest will likely shake out a bunch of innovations, not just in battery technology ( the chemistry) but in design.... with improvements in how to layout the cells to make charging go faster.... kind of like how SSD/flash memory cells are getting technological improvements to help increase WRITE speeds.

SSD write speed and battery charging speed have alot in common conceptually. The very nature of the elements they rely on have time constraints on how fast data...er energy... can be stored.

The surface of all this has barely been scratched. The financial markets have been so perverted in the last 10 years that funding for innovation outside the giant corporations has been almost nonexistent.

Hopefully that will change, but the whole electric transportation scene is a new "gold rush" waiting to happen.

I know of one critical breakthrough that will be game changing, but am not at liberty to discuss it. But cool things will be happening soon.

But I'm afraid hydrogen aint ever gonna happen, way to much hassle, and LNG/CNG would be easier to implement and be pursued long before hydrogen was to be seriously considered.

Combining solar generation on a mass scale, on every residence and business in the US... like the rural electrification program...and actually really actually CLEAN coal production, for real, not marketing bullshit, we'll have plenty of capacity to meet the needs with transportation converting to electric.

As for the batteries... all electric/hybrid batteries must be built for recycling and be recycled. If you just start out that way, there wont be a problem down the road with batteries laying around like old tires :eek::rolleyes::p

And it should be, since recycling the materials would cost less than making it new all over again... just like aluminum cans, recycling makes economic sense.
 
The current hybrids are sort of silly. Without electric brakes gaining back as much energy from slowing down as possible, they just won't get the huge MPG boost that is "potentially" out there.

My sister has a Civic Hybrid too, and with good technique and high tire pressure, you can get good mileage out of it.

What cracks me up is, you can take the same setup and pop in on an Acura or any other Honda. It's the CVT transmission that cuts back on the MPG potential as well. Stick a 5 spd manual on it instead and things would start looking real good.

To really shine though, electric or hybrid need seperate motor/generators on each wheel, to get the transmission out of the equation, and allow for highly efficient recoup of the momentum the car has through braking. All the energy spent making the car go, and then you waste the potential energy of motion by heating up the brake pads. Not very efficient overall, ay what?

Not to mention the benefits of all wheel drive and traction control and ABS braking.

Kinda mean tossing rocks at a technology in its infancy... nothing would ever get off the ground if we just bury it cause it wasn't 100% perfect out of the starting gate.
 
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