Chris Duffrin, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Energy Connection in St. Paul, plugs in the HourCar Prius parked at the Mississippi Market. It has a battery in the back, and now the electricity to recharge the battery comes from solar panels on the store. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Hemphill)
Car-sharing programs are more
popular now that gas is more expensive.
People like saving money as well as reducing
their carbon footprint. One car-sharing
project is going all the way in its mission
of reducing global-warming impacts. Members
can do errands without burning an ounce of
gas. Stephanie Hemphill reports
on a non-profit group that converted two Toyota
Priuses to run on battery power – and charges
the batteries with the sun:
Transcript
Car-sharing programs are more
popular now that gas is more expensive.
People like saving money as well as reducing
their carbon footprint. One car-sharing
project is going all the way in its mission
of reducing global-warming impacts. Members
can do errands without burning an ounce of
gas. Stephanie Hemphill reports
on a non-profit group that converted two Toyota
Priuses to run on battery power – and charges
the batteries with the sun:
At the Mississippi Market food co-op in St. Paul, there’s a brand-new
solar collector on the roof.
The electricity goes to a box attached to a lamppost in the parking lot.
A cord comes out of the box; at the other end of the cord is a normal
three-prong plug, and it’s plugged into the back end of a Prius.
“The battery is installed in the spare tire wheel hub.”
Chris Duffrin is taking me for a spin in the Prius.
“You just unplug the plug back here, and you enter the car just like
the rest of our cars — you use your key fob to scan in. That pops the
locks open.”
The key fob is programmed with your account information. It gets
you in the car, and tells the computer when you’re using the car and
when you bring it back. The key to the Prius is in the car.
“power up…”
The computer screen on the dashboard displays all kinds of
information, including data on the most recent trip.
“There’s the trip I just took to South Minneapolis for a meeting; we
went 18 miles round-trip; we got 94.8 miles per gallon. With our plug-
in we often get in the 90s, and at times we’re running over a hundred
miles per gallon.”
There’s still an engine in the front, and it kicks in when you accelerate
quickly. But the primary power is delivered by the battery. These
vehicles get about twice the mileage of a standard Prius.
Chris Duffrin is Executive Director of the nonprofit Neighborhood
Energy Connection. One of its projects is HourCar, a three-year-old
car sharing program.
“You can get some trips in this car where you are literally emitting no
carbon.”
It costs about $10,000 to add the battery, and the solar collectors cost
about $18,000.
“What we’re trying to do is demonstrate that, when those prices start
coming down, this is something people can do. And not just for
themselves, but if they share a car and share those costs, then this
can become a really efficient, clean way of traveling.”
Duffrin says at first, the people who joined HourCar were mostly
motivated by concerns about the environment. But now people want
to save money on gas. He says membership grew by 70% in the last
year. Still, it’s a tiny number: there are 650 members. They share 16
cars, parked at about a dozen locations around St. Paul and
Minneapolis.
The payment plans include a monthly fee and a charge per hour and
per mile.
HourCar is helping just a tiny handful of people reduce their carbon
footprint. But their individual choices are moving the whole society
toward better answers, according to J. Drake Hamilton. She’s a
climate change expert at Fresh Energy.
“When companies and policy makers see that people really want
better options out there — they want smarter ways to get to work, and
they want cleaner cars — that’s a time to step in and say, ‘Okay we’re
raising the bar, we’re keeping climate and people’s pocketbooks in
mind, and we’re making better choices available everywhere.'”
HourCar is installing another solar battery-charger at a light rail
station. Members say as mass transit options improve, more people
will be able to get along without their own car.
For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
