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Just recovering my voice after a super Altwheels festival.
We decided to gather up the hybrid advocates into one joint group, put out some of the UDHEV demos, and call it the Hybrid Owners Experience, and Tech center.
Hobbit, Jessy with his 322K gen one Prius, Doug Hartley with V-boosted PHEV Prius, Willie Yee with his Star Trek theme modified prius, and My lonely Insight.
We were situated right at the T station exit , so we got a tremendous amount of traffic. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully we made some hybrid car converts.

Doug and I got many Civic hybrid owners that were looking at the possibility of going to PHEV, but since we have little actual driving time on the Civic, there is still a big question that needs to be answered as to that possibility.

On the Prius, when the boost system gets the charge up past the 73% SOC point, the system starts dumping current into MG2 to assist the gas engine more aggressively, and to leave room for the next regen cycle. The closer to 80% the greater the assist/MPG, as the electric is doing progressively more work.This software feature in the Prius is what allows MPG boosting when one needs to go over the 40MPH EV mode limit.

Can you Civic owners detect this same type of charge dumping via more aggressive assist on the civic, say after a long downhill charge, or when the SOC is near the top?

Since MIMA for the Civic is not likely at this time, we would need this charge dumping feature in the stock operating system if one was going to get any advantage from the the V-boost or other PHEV system.
Civic owners opinions?

Mike;

I can certainly confirm that on the HCH-II's, the affinity to assist definitely increases when the state of charge is at 70+%.
This is quite evident to many of us especially under normal operating conditions. So much so that it is often considered a nuisance.
;)

Cheers;

MSantos

Thats good news. I suspected that it would, as one of the MIMA Insight guys also has both a Prius and a civic , and was told by Hymotion that they would be doing conversions for both.

It would be cool to try boosting a civic pack like I am doing on my Insight, to see how well it works. My first boost test was simply using a multy taped prius pack with a 1 ohm 150W series resistor to limit current.
http://www.99mpg.com/Projectcars/TheBestHybridmix/
http://www.99mpg.com/Projectcars/TheBestHybridmix/boosterpacktest1/boosterchargetest1.jpg,0


Doug's V-Boost or the hymotion system is a much more realistic way to do a final conversion, but this test would be useful for confirmation.
The idea would be to boost to > 70% SOC, and shift the hybrid mix to the electric side of the equation with much of the extra power coming from the boost pack.
100MPG?
Sounds like a great project for the Saturday hybrid electric workshop. Any brave civic owners nearby?
http://www.99mpg.com/workshops/mikessaturdayhybri/
;)

I was invited to show my PHEV Insight at a PHEV event at the Harvard MA Public Library.
http://www.99mpg.com/events/pluginhybridfairin/
A123 is bringing a Hymotion PHEV modified Prius.

A friend sent me this link to a company that claims to have PHEV packs for most hybrids?
http://www.lionev.com/upgrade_to_Lithium.html
Looks interesting

...

A friend sent me this link to a company that claims to have PHEV packs for most hybrids?
http://www.lionev.com/upgrade_to_Lithium.html
Looks interesting


Mike this is very good news indeed. What this means is that for little more than $2000 we get to retrofit a Prius or HCH-II with additional EV capacity?

I am actually interested in reviewing whatever technical details and specifications there is. Even packaging and integration info would help. I guess I'll give them a call sometime today.

Cheers;

MSantos

Interesting. They list the Insight as well...