[Tigermidge]

I have been thinking about buying a Prius for my wife. We live 5 miles from work. Can you put a onboard battery charger in a prius?
The point being you could drive 5 mile and never need to use the engine and plug it in when you get home. there buy never really needing gas?

Is this a bad idea? a good idea?
any thoughts put there.

 

[rdrast]

Short answer, No.

You wouldn't be able to find a commercially available charger to charge the 208 Volt battery stack in the Prius. Even if you could, it would be extremely unsafe to play with, and would definately void the generous warrantee on the cars powertrain.

Also, even though it **seems** big, the battery stack really doesn't have tremendous capacity. It is easy to deplete it by 25% or more in one hard acceleration.

 

[hyperion]

Plus, your engine is going to run quite a lot just to keep the catalytic converter up to emission proof temperatures. No matter what your speed this temp has to be maintained.