It can power your home in a snowstorm

That is just stunningly excellent!

The solution to off grid storage is your car!

It would be a great promotion for Prius in the north here, if they threw in the necessary inverter (or provided a serviceable model for sale at cost, even).

Power outages are no joke, and in this area it seems there is a three to five day major outage due to weather every ten years or so.. we are due one anytime at all

Backup heat and power systems are very handy indeed.

Very, very cool.

However, why would I need to power my freezer and refrigerator in an ice storm?

Had this happen to me in georgia in 1993-or 1994.

DAy after the ice storm, the sun came out. we had packed our perishables in snow in a couple of wheel barrows. Running the freezer would have avoided the higher temperature excursion from the sun showing up.

Other Pain in the butt at that time was that our gas stove would not ignite unless their was mains power. We ended up cooking on my grill and camping stoves...

We moved back to ohio we had an electrician wire in an auxiliary box that we can plug intp my 5kw generator. just throw off the main breaker, throw on the auxillary box, and selected circuits (heater , kitchen a couple of light circuits) get power.

enough to get by.

milo

It is to show that you can run all your essential electrical items in the household, obviously for him the fridge was more important then the iron or a smaller stove to run despite it was winter.

I wouldn't be surprise if Toyota and Honda would after this article get the idea to throw in a inverter for their hybrids in case of emergency.

These hybrids are ideal for camping as you do not need a generator to carry around.

This article also shows the upper hand these manufacturers can have over the BIG 3s who are currently under pressure from the feds to prove in the next three months their competitiveness in order to continue to receive the much needed helping hand.

The same can be said about many of the other car manufacturers around the world as well who currently don't have similar product on the market.

"As long as the Prius has enough fuel, it can produce three kilowatts of continuous power."

Am I missing something here? They're trying to tell us that the alternator in the Prius put out 3000 watts for days at a time?

I just really don't know. Maybe someone can educate me here. Is this possible?

This from Wiki. It has an electric engine coupled to a gasoline one which, when in tandem acts as a generator.

Actually i;ve heard tell that a typical truck alternator could power your complete house for virtually ever provided you could spin it...at a particular speed...So it appears to be true...A friend of mine versed in maintenace(electrical/mechanical in particular in a variety of heavy industrial settings is going to help me set up a trial of this notion sometime in the spring/early summer when the last hoary mantle leaves our grounds.....This article makes sense....Take back the power..Now...Seems far too liberating don't you think......Marty W.

We did that in the 80's at a small company called Grichelco in Quebec, Canada. Unfortunately, It no longer exist.

At the time we were getting 120VDC at 1500W from modified car alternators. The truck version reached 5KW. We also had a welder version.

Unfortunately, the newly developed variable speed drills and break protected circular saws didn't like the DC. Our efforts to develop a robust AC inverter in those days were unsuccessful for the lack of suitable components. The space under the cars and trucks hood also shank rapidly eliminating the space needed for the supplementary alternator.

Running the alternate at the correct speed would give you the 60Hz needed and you could re-wire the stator to get a higher voltage. You would need a special regulator though. The problem is that a single phase load draws a pulsating power that would cause problems at high load. You would only get about half of the balanced three phases equivalent. Also, car alternators driven by belts are not very efficient. It is OK for special applications and emergency but I would not use it for major power generation.

You have to remember this car has an on board electronics variable-frequency drive (VFD) that converts this powerful 3 phase alternator (that works similarly as a normal car alternator) to an electric motor when it's needed.

It can both start the engine as well as move the car along at slow speed in peak traffic until it start to pick up speed and then the engine kicks in.

The start up of this car is as quiet as anything (no clicks or chattering like a normal starter makes).

The rotor current to this alternator in motor mode can control the torque and in alternator mode the output voltage (like the normal car gen does).

I believe the battery is providing the 3kW (via the power inverter), the alternator is only recharging the battery

Buy a good car instead of a prius and the money you save you could buy a honda generator

In your dreams sun-shine. I believe you like gas guzzlers, don't you?

These cars cost on average less in Britain than most other ones in its class and the on road costs are very low (no congestion charge in London city and the road tax is like £15.00 pa).

A train ticket-machine servicing firm in London exclusively using hybrid cars since they get the aforementioned charges providing their fleet comprises these sort of cars only.

If you're a private user you can still get heavy on road discounts.

Hybrid cars already have a powerful inverter built in. It should be simple for the car company to add a power relay to disconnect the motor, and set a "power your home" function for 50 or 60HZ. They would have to include some kind of filter to reduce the switching noise. This setup could potentially power up the whole house with 110/220V. One would need to make sure that the electrical entrance is disconnected to avoid feeding power to the grid. This is why the connection to the car should only work with a special transfer switch installed by an electrician on the house feeder.

Using the car as a generator makes sense as it eliminates most problems associated with the maintenance of a generator, starting it regularly, finding a place to store it, automatic starting, pollution (air and noise)... The car would be always ready. The cost of the supplementary hardware should be lower than the cost of a reasonable size generator. In general, during a power failure, people are at home most of the time and the car is parked in the driveway doing nothing. If you have a garage, one should ensure proper ventilation.

Does the Prius have an automatic shutdown in case of it starts in a garage where the CO2 is rising?

While this would be a good feature that could bring a few more customers in, they probably will not do it because of liabilities issues. Especially in the US market where some stupid user who will stick his finfer in the socket will sue the manufacturer for $ millions... Lawyers and stupid people are slowing progress again...

"stupid user who will stick his finger in the socket will sue the manufacturer for $ millions... Lawyers and stupid people are slowing progress again..."

I couldn't agree with you more on this.

Back in the late 70s, when microwave ovens came on the market, a stupid woman successfully sued one of the Japanese manufacturer for damages - after she bathed her puppy and tried to quick dry him - for failing to mention such things in the user manual.

While this current article is good for Toyota, I'm sure, it is likely to create a lot of foes in the car industry around the world who will go to any extreme to encourage the legal professionals to find some kind of way/s to sue the manufacturer if necessary to degrade their products!

If it won't happen then the legislators will bring about some obstacles to hamper a seemingly practical thing like this so the hopeless can still have the lions share, this can come about in any country.

DEATH TO THE STUPID AND WILLFULLY IGNORANT...

Support Darwin, kill a lawyer and let the stupid people weed themselves out of the gene pool...

Notice: This is not an endorsement of litigicide, ethnic cleansing, racial purification or violence of any kind. The reader is warned that they should use sound judgment when making any decision and that the writer of this post is in no way to be considered sound especially when being judgemental. Furthermore, the author is completely lacking in possessions for which any material gain could be made, therefore any attempt to sue the author will undoubtedly result in greater legal expense for the plaintiff then the author is in possession of. The reader is also warned that taking action based on the postings of an unknown individual may be construed as indication of inferior mental capacity which could lead to their own untimely purification...

This concept is nothing new - My father used to power a milking machine on a dairy farm with the family car (a 1940 Plymouth) during those 3 - 5 day blackout blizzards in Minnesota. He had a check valve that threaded into a spark plug hole which created enough vacuum to power one milking machine. He would adjust up the idle and that old Plymouth would chug along on 5 cylinders making Dad and the cows happy.

The Prius has nothing on a '40 Plymouth...

When was the last time your IQ has been checked, just curious?

I guess I've never actually checked it, but I feel like a near-moron relative to the average members of CR4.

I like your avatar though.