What EDrive does
With an EDrive upgrade installed in your 2004 or later year Toyota Prius, you won't miss those trips to the gas station as your daily commute driving range expands to well over 1000 miles per fill-up. EDrive allows a substantial amount of gasoline to be displaced by electricity when you charge nightly and drive locally. Using any 110-volt wall socket, your EDrive Prius can be plugged in overnight to recharge an expanded lithium-ion battery system. With a full charge, expect to see over 100 miles per gallon for the first 40 miles of your daily drive under average conditions. On the open road past 40 miles, or if you forget to plug it in, your EDrive Prius will behave like a normal Prius gasoline-electric hybrid.
EDrive can be installed in the rear of a Prius in about four hours without touching the motors, engine or hybrid control system up front. The lithium-ion battery system fits entirely under the rear cargo carpet.
How EDrive works
The stock nickel-metal hydride battery for the Prius is replaced with an advanced lithium iron phosphate battery system with more than 15 times the usable energy capacity. The battery management system on the vehicle is also replaced, using proprietary EDrive hardware and software that enables the Prius to make use of the expanded battery. At low speeds and mild driving conditions, the system puts the Prius into EV mode, so that it works like an electric car using only the battery and electric motors. Even at higher speeds when the gasoline engine is running, EDrive injects additional electricity from the battery to further reduce gasoline consumption.
Below are images from the dashboard display of our test vehicle. Note that this is an average over 1,000 miles of driving:
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