Two California State Universities will be doing research on a plug-in Prius.

I really hope it becomes feasible. I wonder what it will cost in the final analysis?

I bought two modification packs from Coastal Electronic Technologies last night.

Mod one: http://www.coastaletech.com/electric_only_mode.htm

and Mod two:
http://www.coastaletech.com/nav_kit.htm

I look forward to seeing how they work. One will allow me to use the electric engine only at speeds under 34mph. The other will let my passenger (ahem) operate the nav system while I drive.

Good fun.

The company seems to have a very rudimentary order form, so we'll see if they deliver.

I'm waiting for this.

I was looking at other interfaces today, and found this site fairly plausible on the solutions.

The prospect that Coast Tech's solution could let me use existing factory radio controls and the touch screen to run my ipod rules my brain. Hands down. I'm going nuts with my cassette interface, but I shall wait.

So, I got my stickers in the mail that will allow my Prius into the carpool lane with only one driver (me) in it.

I was surprised that there would be 4 stickers as opposed to one sticker in the rear of the vehicle. In fact, one sticker needs to go on each side of the car: front bumper, rear bumper, left rear quarterpanel, right rear quarter panel.

And it wouldn't be so bad if they weren't big stickers.

Here, I took a terrible photo of them. And yes, since I am in a hurry, I didn't take care to auto-focus, etc. The point is, these stickers are big.



It doesn't help that I don't really like placing stickers on my car. let alone my new car.

So now it comes to this. Carpool lane, or maintaining the integrity of my paint job. Crap.

Of course I'll pick the carpool lane. But I'll feign bitter tears of conflict as I place these bad boys on my beloved blue bleeding heartmobile.