Apologies if this has come up before - I didn;t find anythign in a search;

Has anybody modified their Escape Hybrid so it cabe be charged overnight from the mains, or have any comments to make on this.

thanks

 

The battery isn't big enough to make it worth it. Hybrids aren't electric cars. They only have a battery large enough to allow them to store braking energy to use during acceleration and for short periods. Its just a different concept. The FEH can get a couple of miles on electric... thats it.

In order to make it worth it you'd need to replace the battery with a larger one designed for it. There are kits to do that for the Prius. Question is, how long do those expensive batteries last. They are LiIon... which typicall die in 3 years no matter how you use them. The FEH batteries are NiMH and are intentionally kept in the range of 80%-60% charge (something like that) and cooled to ensure the battery will last 100,000 miles or 10 years at least.

 

You can find more at http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html or from a Google of "plug in hybrid cars".

There is a company that makes a kit to do the FEH.....Canadian....costs about $10K. It's a neat idea....but apparantly the car companies are trying to keep it simple, and so they have. Perhaps hybrids can get a little more complex, and hence more efficient, after they get more accepted.

The Asian Priuus comes with an "EV" button on the dash that makes it EV only, and I would like that....seems easy enough for the average consumer. I have about a quarter mile through the neighborhood every trip that is my little game to keep the ICE off. I'd rather just drive.

 

It doesn't really need to be charged overnight anyway. The engine has to run to heat up the Cat when you first start it so it might as well charge the battery while it's running. I try to drive in EV as much as possible before parking it for the night just for this reason.

 

The conversions include a battery with more capacity to, in essence, make it more of an electric car. For people that make short trips the change from gasolene to electricity can be substantial.....the benefits of that vary from utility to utility, but where I live electricity is pretty reasonable, and all generated from natural gas fired plants. That means it could beat even the low emissions of car. If you're in a place with off peak pricing of electricity it could be better.

I think Ford did a good job of making it feel like a "normal" car, but now that I've tried it, I would be glad if it was more "EV", even if made it a little slower or quirkier.....and that's basically what the conversions do......they replace the logic and the battery.