Where is the government spending for plug-in hybrid conversions?

Where is the government spending for plug-in hybrid conversions?
by Sebastian Blanco on Jul 14th 2009 at 2:35PM

Fact 1: Over the last few months, we've seen the federal government spend all sorts of money to try and reach the twin goals of economic resurrection and a cleaner/greener society. In the auto industry, we have the CARS program, the ending (or not?) of the DOE's hydrogen vehicle program, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVMLP) – which gave $5.9 billion to Ford, $1.6 billion to Nissan and $465 million to Tesla – and, of course, the bailout of GM and Chrysler. This is a big pile of cash.

Fact 2: President Obama, when he was campaigning for his current job, said that he wanted a million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. His proposal, at the time, was to give companies about $4 billion in loans and loan guarantees to develop the plug-ins and to offer consumers a $7,000 tax credit to purchase these vehicles.

Fact 3: 2015 is just over five years away, and there are currently zero production PHEVs available for purchase. The road to getting a million of them out the door in 60 months is not going to be easy.

We have an idea for how to reach – or at least approach – Obama's goal: spend some real money on plug-in conversion technology. We've put some details after the jump.


We're currently spending a week with a converted Prius from Hymotion, a vehicle similar to the one President Bush was shown in 2007. Sure, if you don't drive it like a plug-in, you're not going to get 100 mpg. But learning correct driving and recharging style will be paramount to any successful adoption of PHEVs. And, considering that the Hymotion Prius conversion packs (and others) are available now, why doesn't the government sink some money into making sure that anyone who wants to convert their hybrid to a plug-in vehicle can afford to do so?

The government has been helping to fund natural gas conversions for years, so there's a precedent for this, a precedent that should limit the number of people arguing that the plugs need to be installed at the factory or they won't be safe. Any conversion pack that would qualify for federal money would naturally be required to be safe, but this is a hurdle that has been and can again be cleared. If some money was diverted to a.) expanding the number of hybrid models that conversion packs were available for and b.) to giving consumers a rebate to buy those systems, wouldn't this be an affordable, fairly easy way to at least get a few hundred thousand PHEVs on the roads soon?

Let's play with some numbers. Since we're driving the Hymotion Prius, we'll use their dollar amounts, but all conversion options are pretty pricey right now. For $10,000, someone like Pat Cadam can turn your second-gen Prius into a PHEV in a few hours. For your money, you'll get a car that can go 40ish miles and has a top speed of 35 mph in EV mode. Go further or faster, of course, and the Prius behaves just like it did before the conversion happened. A price point this high is really only attractive to early adopters. What would it take to make getting a conversion done a no-brainer? How about a 30-mile pack for $5,000? Or a 20-mile pack for $3,500 (we're just throwing out numbers here, btw). And, let's say that instead of $4,500 for a new car that gets better than 28 mpg under the CARS program, how about $4,500 off the price of a PHEV conversion? Would people bite at that price? Or, what if the $7,500 plug-in credit that factory-produced PHEVs like the Volt (sorry, ER-EV) will get could be applied to conversions? If so, would $2,500 for a somewhat limited 40-mile range PHEV Prius be too sweet to pass up?

What are we missing? Is this a plan that should be promoted or not?
Tags: conversion, featured, phev, phev conversion, PhevConversion, plug-in hybrid, plug-in hybrid conversion, plug-in hybrids, plug-in prius, Plug-inHybrid, Plug-inHybridConversion, Plug-inHybrids, Plug-inPrius

PermalinkEmail thisPrint thisTweet thisComments (22)Share
.
Related Articles From Autoblog Green

Toyota to lease 200 PHEV Priuses in Japan starting in late 2009
46 days ago

eBay find of the day: Hymotion Plug-in Prius
157 days ago

CARB puts off plug-in hybrid conversion warranty, emissions decision
176 days ago

Related Articles From Autoblog Green for 07.15.09
5 days ago

Toyota Prius plug-in tops 65 mpg
168 days ago

Maximum Bob: No plug-in hybrid race between GM, Toyota
325 days ago

See More Related Articles and Blog Posts
.Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

1Andrew
2:58PM (7/14/2009)
Here's what you're missing: not everyone drives a hybrid, and not every hybrid is designed for high mileage. Why waste money focusing on converting a small segment of the market into an even smaller segment of the market, when you could probably get a lot more bang for your buck investing in how to convert regular ICE vehicles to hybrids?? With millions of non-hybrid ICE vehicles on the road right now, THOSE are the vehicles you have to target.

Reply
↓↑report2meme
3:01PM (7/14/2009)
The primary constraint on the number of EVs we can produce is battery production capacity. Since conversions are based on vehicles that aren't necessarily uber-light/uber-aero, they tend to get fewer miles per watt hour. Thus you could actually *decrease* the amount of vehicles we could get on the road that way.

Conversions in general make for poor EVs. The weight distribution is wrong, the space available is wrong, and all sorts of components are driven by the gasoline engine. Even on a "professional", "factory" conversion like the Mini-E, you can see the compromises that went into it.


Reply
↓↑report3Serge
3:19PM (7/14/2009)
I'd rather see more money made available as low-cost loans to domestic advanced battery manufacturers. You have companies like Yardney Technical Products or Sion Power demonstrating and developing great product. Now let's get production capacity going and fill the market with lower-cost batteries.

Reply
↓↑report4LaughingTooHard
3:33PM (7/14/2009)
After reading the Title I was less than thrilled about this article.

After reading the content I was, as expected, fired up.

Let's take a look the Demographics of the Prius owner:
* 71 percent of respondents earned more than $100,000 per year.
* 73 percent were 40 years or older.
* 58 percent were men.
* 88 percent were “very happy” with their Prius; 12 percent were “somewhat happy.”

These are the people we need to reward with tax credits?
Laughable.

Show me a program is designed to puts some of unemployed 9.7% of this country's workforce BACK to work and I will be happy to sign off on it. . And don't give me that crap that R&D money wasted on "bridge technologies" like PHEV provide any return in employed workforce numbers. Tesla employs what 250? Wow, impressive.

We need the unemployed back to work so the whole country can recover so green technology can continue to thrive and evolve.

Oh I am sorry didn't you get the memo: unless the country recovers pronto, few people will care about Eco this or Green that - they will be too busy caring about food and shelter.

What we don't need is another tax credit for the working White Male 40+ $100K+ demographic.

Reply
↓↑report5sac
4:30PM (7/14/2009)
I agree that Prius or other hybrid conversions are too small of a market segment to really make a difference, but I do think it makes sense to offer incentives for conversions. It would help for one thing to stimulate addtional demand for batteries. However, I think that it would be really great to offer incentives for conversions of gas vehicles to electric vehicles. How many tired gas vehicles are out there serving as second (or lets face it, third) cars that get driven very little and and for short distances? If an electric conversion costs $10-12k for a 20-30 mile range, and the vehicle is already a second vehicle, there may well be plenty of people willing to invest money in a conversion. Now if there were a tax credit available for, say $2500 - $4500 towards a conversion from gas to BEV, I think alot of people would jump on it (myself included). This would make the cost of entry into electric vehicles (

Reply
↓↑report6sac
4:33PM (7/14/2009)
-continued from comment above-
(say under $10k) much more affordadable and less risky for alot of people and could really take off.

Reply
↓↑report7arw
4:40PM (7/14/2009)
How about just taxing fuel up to about $10 a gallon like in Europe then letting people and the markets decide what the best solution is?

Reply
↓↑report8Sebastian
4:46PM (7/14/2009)
you're right. $10 might be a bit high (at first), but it's hard to argue against a price floor ($5?) to really move things forward

↓↑report9paulwesterberg
5:24PM (7/14/2009)
Just pass a bill to raise fuel taxes by 25 cents every year. Then people will know that high prices will be coming in 10 years even if they don't have to pay them now.

↓↑report10falbhan
7:02PM (7/14/2009)
Yeah, definitely need to phase it in, but it seems it's the only
thing that accurately and fairly deal with the issues at hand.
Unfortunately there is a shortage of political will here in the US and
we'll likely never see this happen.

↓↑report11Throwback
4:47PM (7/14/2009)
"We have an idea for how to reach – or at least approach – Obama's goal: spend some real money on plug-in conversion technology"

I think we have borrowed and spent enough money already this year. Obama still does not know how we are going to pay for a healthcare overall, which I would give a higher prioirty than plugin cars.

Reply
↓↑report12locoyocal
5:12PM (7/14/2009)
Why are people still talking about hybrids.... Its like talking about a titanium bicycle.

Reply
↓↑report13paulwesterberg
5:30PM (7/14/2009)
Actually I think there are still interesting opportunities for titanium bicycles:
http://www.ttinet.com/tf/index.htm

Wind resistance eats up 80% of your cycling output. Bicycle weight has less impact on performance than aerodynamics.

↓↑report14kert
6:23PM (7/14/2009)
Up the fuel taxes, use the earned tax dollars to rebuild the roads.
Prescribing solutions ( PHEV, hydrogen, ethanol , whatever the next fad ) or picking winners at starting lines ends in disasters.
The problem is oil dependency ( to a lesser degree, pollution ) and to resolve this you have to start making oil less available ( meaning, increase its prices ), market will figure out the rest.

Reply
↓↑report15win39
7:38PM (7/14/2009)
I see no way way to solve this problem. The rational thing to do is to raise the gasoline tax and use a portion of it to fund research on alternative transportation technologies like batteries. The only problem is the politics in that it would be a completely visible tax and people would curse the current administration with every fill up, the Obama tax. They would be thrown out with the next election and everything would be reversed and the problem would not be approached until half the coastal cities are inundated,there are famines everywhere, population die off, and martial law declared to keep public order when people refuse to quietly starve to death. I pity the children of a generation unwilling to make sacrifices for the future.

Reply
↓↑report16jonwil2002
10:03PM (7/14/2009)
Don't tax the consumer, tax the oil companies. Tell the consumer that you are removing subsidies for the oil companies and making them pay more to fund solutions to make America less dependent on foriegn oil. Oil companies are big greedy corporations and the public wont complain if you tax a big greedy corporation. Also, any price increases can be attributed to the oil companies and not the government. And, the "lets make America less dependent on foriegn oil" mantra is popular with the public too.



Reply
↓↑report17GenWaylaid
11:58PM (7/14/2009)
"President Obama...said that he wanted a million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015."

Obama's a politician. Politicians say a lot of things. What's your point?


Reply
↓↑report18Charles Whalen
12:16AM (7/15/2009)
You are behind the curve and behind the times. What you are missing -- (you must not have researched your article very carefully) -- is that your “idea” and “plan” have already been thought of a long time ago and are already being implemented. Many thousands of plug-in hybrid conversions are being funded by federal stimulus dollars, and states are also implementing consumer rebate programs for plug-in hybrid conversions, some of them funded through federal stimulus block grants to the states.

Reply
↓↑report19Jim
7:28AM (7/15/2009)
"What are we missing? Is this a plan that should be promoted or not?"

No. Problem is that it could lead to a lot of half-assed conversion kits which have been through minimal (if any) validation testing. Mucking with the control and charging systems on a hybrid is something you cannot screw up. A tax credit is all well and good until you need the car fixed every month 'cos of the conversion kit (which would void the warranty, mind you) or if a flaw in the charging system burns your house down.

Reply
↓↑report20steve
8:56AM (7/15/2009)
There are numerous problems with conversion kits, not the least of which is durability. Getting past five years of regular driving with a battery pack is a big deal. Combine this with the fact that there aren't many suitable cars to convert and the people who own them have more money than the average American - this is just a dumb transfer of money.

It would be much more cost effective to promote biking in some cities (like Portland has done). Make it safer and give people places to park. Not using a car for short trips has many practical consequences.