It's interesting Jed, there is a 12V car battery in the back of the car that is charged from the Li batteries, which is charged from the engine. The 12V is used for the car electronics. I did see a youtube video of a guy that used a 2000W 12V inverter for emergency power to his house. He claimed it was better than most gas generators. So the same sort of story. I've not tried it.
On the gas getting old; this volt has an engine maintenance mode that runs the gas engine for 15 minutes every month. It kicks in automatically. There are some operating modes were the gas engine can be run, like for long distance highway driving, it can run gas only saving the battery for short city driving. One of my old EE profs claimed it was one of the best engineered cars he had ever seen, and he lived out in the country with a 35 mile commute to the University. At his house, the car port roof is solar. There they had free charger parking to encourage green commuting. That would get him back by the end of the day. But also, when the weather is really cold (sub-zero), it doesn't even bother with the electric, it just goes directly to the gas engine to heat everything up. It's a pretty decent car all-and-all. On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 4:28 PM Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > CB Sites <cbsit...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> When home, I plug it in with the 115V charger device that plugs into a >> standard 3 prong outlet. Nothing special. It takes about 6-8 hrs for a >> full charge. Most commutes for me are about 30miles so I never see the >> gas engine. Last year my TOTAL gas consumption for this car was 1/2 of a >> tank regular. >> > > I suppose the only problem with that . . . is that gas gets "stale." If > you don't use it. So I have heard. > > Question: Does it have a convenient place to attach an inverter? So you > can use it as an emergency generator? I have a Prius with the starter > battery in the back. During an extended power failure, I attach a 2 kW > inverter. With trepidation, because I read that over 1800 W it will blow a > fuse. So I am careful not to put much of a load on it. 1.8 kW is enough to > run a modern refrigerator, several LED lights, and the internet. I made > sure of that with a cheap wattmeter. > > This works well because the car motor only comes on a few times an hour. I > wish all hybrids, plug in hybrids and electric cars were equipped with 2 > ordinary 120 VAC outlets. > > Some people attach large inverters to the Prius traction battery. That's > enough to run your whole house. I don't want to mess with that. That has to > be dangerous! > >
