The electric car was killed off a few years ago by the big car companies. You can read all about that here.
Just leave it to good old ingenuity and stick to it ness for things to get done in this country. The electric car went away but now due to some hard work and dedication some folks have taken hybrid cars that run on a combo of gas and battery power and applied more battery technology and computer software to create the new plug in cars of today. They get 60-100 miles per gallon!
Toyota Prius owners have taken the already popular and fuel efficient hybrid and and created their own version of the plug-in electric car that has been mourned by those of us who wanted electric cars and had them taken off the market by the big car companies.
In Northern California Prius owners have done it for this reason: five words. Those five words? one hundred miles per gallon. Imagine that if you will. These are not folks waiting years for the imaginary car they promise us will come out some day. No they have gone and done it and are proudly driving around town smoking the rest of us on gas mileage.
Felix Kramer of Redwood City, CA did it. He says,”We took the hybrid car to its logical conclusion.” by adding more batteries and the ability to recharge by plugging into a regular socket in the wall at night, making it a plug-in hybrid car. A normal Prius gets around 50 mpg on the highway, but these modified versions get twice that by replying more on the cleaner, cheaper electricity and battery technology they have added to the mix.
These trend setters tweaked and changed their cars to make a point tha tif they could do it then the car makers can too and should!
They have a group online called the California Cars Initiative. The coversion consists of adding inexpensive lead acid batteries and some innovative software that allows them to fool the car’s computerized controls into using more of the the energy stored in batteries, which ends up giving the cars over 100 mpg in local driving conditions and 50-80 mpg on the highways. The cost of the conversion runs about $5000.
image – cal cars