A Prius on the barbie

By Martin Zimmerman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The last thing backers of plug-in hybrid vehicles needed was the sight of a Toyota Prius powered by the cutting-edge technology sitting in flames beside the road.That’s exactly what they got earlier this month, when a plug-in Prius operated by a South Carolina electric cooperative caught fire and was burned to the automotive equivalent of “well done.”

No one was injured in the fire, which apparently started when sparks from loose connections in the car’s battery compartment ignited the upholstery. But the incident certainly hasn’t helped advance the cause of the plug-in hybrid.
In its unmodified, off-the-showroom-floor state, the Prius is a “traditional” hybrid powered by both an electric motor and a gasoline engine.

A plug-in version of the car powered by lithium ion batteries, which could go farther on electric power and could be recharged between trips, isn’t expected from Toyota until 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, a variety of after-market companies will convert a Prius to a plug-in for anywhere from $7,000 to more than $20,000.

It was an after-market plug-in converted by Hybrids Plus of Boulder, Colo., that went up in flames. It was one of 10 acquired by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn. of Arlington, Va., and distributed to member utilities for field testing. “We really just want to see how these things work,” said project manager Andrew Cotter.

The cooperatives’ fleet of plug-ins has been parked while an investigation was conducted. Although the report, issued Friday, said the batteries themselves weren’t at fault, lithium ion batteries have been under a cloud since a series of recalls two years ago related to fires in laptop computers and other devices.
Carl Lawrence, chief executive of Hybrids Plus, acknowledge that the incident was caused by “an assembly problem,” which comes as a relief to backers of plug-in technology.

“I was worried that this would turn into a major incident, but actually most people seem to understand that this was an incident that didn’t involve the batteries,” said Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org, a Palo Alto-based advocacy group. “In fact, the batteries came out of it looking very good.”
Toyota, which officially takes a hands-off policy toward after-market plug-in conversions, said this is the first incident of this it’s aware of. There are at least 150 plug-in hybrid conversions on the road, according to Kramer, about half of them in California.

Photo: Toyota

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