If you happen to be the owner of a Toyota Prius, or any other battery-packed hybrid car, you can use it as a surprisingly effective emergency generator.


After a storm knocked out power in his neighborhood, John Sweeney did some characteristic things to keep warm in the chilly Massachusetts winter weather. His family bundled up, they burned wood, but for lack of an emergency generator to keep the lights on they took advantage of the battery based design of their Prius. The Harvard Press reports:

Sweeney ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas. "When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius…These inverters are available for about $100 many places online," he wrote. The device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.


While using a car with an inverter as an emergency source of power is no new thing, the combination of the large battery capacity of the hybrid car and it's modest fuel consumption as a generator is genius. Photo by Beth and Christian.

Ice Storm Tests Mettle of Harvard Residents [via Gadgetopia]