Craig's blog

PHEV is an acronym I've been reading a lot about this summer. It stands for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. It's basically the concept of combining some of the qualities of a hybrid vehicle (like the Prius), with the qualities of an electric vehicle (like the Tesla). Today there are very few of these vehicles around (I suspect less than 50), but they're a compelling concept.

Here's the basic idea: Take an efficient hybrid, like the Prius, beef up it's batteries (which are pretty wimpy) and add a plug and a battery charger. Each night when you get home, you plug in your car (to a standard 120V outlet) and re-charge your battery. The next day your Prius runs it's first 30 or so miles relying primarily on the battery and it's electric motor, getting >100 MPG. If you drive more than 30 miles, it automatically converts to standard Prius hybrid driving and gets only 50 MPG. When you get home at the end of the day, plug it back in.

As you might imagine, you get some important advantages of a hybrid - unlimited range with gasoline when necessary - and of an electric - very efficient energy use and very low emissions - for a normal commute.

The good news is that the Toyota hybrids (and there now a number of them: Prius, Highlander, Camry, Lexus RX400h, Lexus GS450h, Ford Escape) lend themselves to this sort of setup pretty easily. Unfortunately, there are of course some problems. The biggest one is that batteries are still too expensive. A Prius conversion similar to what I described above would cost ~$10,000, and batteries are the major culprit. The second is that while the Toyota Hybrid System is well designed for this setup, doing it as an afterthought is not easy (as opposed to designing it in in the first place).

Still, I find the idea very intriguing, and am even considering doing a conversion myself (although don't hold me to it). If you want to learn more, check out www.calcars.org.