The PriUPS Concept

The hybrid electric automobile is an enormous advance over standard internal combustion vehicles. Advantages include energy saving, reduced noxious emissions and "greenhouse gases," lower operating costs, etc. I bought a 2005 Toyota Prius (after spending a year on the waiting list) and I am now half the gas guzzler I once was. I feel virtuous, and have a neat new toy.

But I didn't buy the Prius to save a few bucks on gas, and, with all due respect, warmer winters wouldn't bother me at all. No, I bought it because there's more to the hybrid than others seem to realize. In a (not so unusual) case of "I'm right and the world is wrong," I have decided that we are all looking at hybrids in an upside-down fashion.

My car, and almost certainly yours as well, spends most of its life, lump-like, sitting in a garage or a parking spot. During the hour or so each day you wish you were somewhere else, it takes you there. And then it lumps some more. What a shocking waste of vehicular life! What a burden on my frugal soul.

I had the realization some time ago that the gasoline-electric hybrid is the perfect solution to a number of individual and societal problems:

Remember the August 2003 electric grid failure? Hybrids can prevent future occurrences.
Remember terrorism? Hybrids can prevent terrorists from plunging us into the dark.
Remember that nice, now-crispy squirrel that killed your electricity one day last spring? Or the auto that knocked over the utility pole? Hybrids can provide for you while the power company can't.
Remember how the price of electricity skyrockets at periods of peak demand? You can generate your own, and perhaps even make a profit.

This site is dedicated to that "other side" of the hybrid. Don't think of it as "a car," think of it as a power plant.

Richard Factor
14 May 2005

Legal stuff...

This site is not affiliated with or beholden to Toyota or any other commercial interest, at least not yet. I'm in the process of investigating the rest of the system - connectors, inverters and transfer switches. I'll add that info, which may be of a commercial nature, when I have it.

Motor vehicles and, to a lesser extent, electricity, cause many injuries and deaths every year. Given our society's goal of keeping us alive until we die from something else, I would be irresponsible if I didn't issue this important safety tip: "Be careful!"