Is it too late? Making a difference NOW In an effort to make it clear that my car has three inter related modifications, not just one, here is the full story about my car: The MIMA system is one mod, V-Boost booster battery and controller is the second, The drop down E-wheel is the third. I will try to simply explain the complex parts of my cars systems, so many of your questions will be answered. Hybrid cars have two sources of power to propel the car, a gas engine and electric motor. How the gas and electric work together is under full automatic computer control on all hybrids today. Toyota's hybrid system called the synergy drive, Honda calls it the IMA. I refer to the ratio of gas power to electric power that is used to propel the car as the hybrid mix. More electric will yield more MPG. Electric priority means that electric is used for acceleration. Gas for steady state power. Assist is when the electric motor helps push the car, regeneration or regen is when the motor changes to a generator and charges the HV batteries. MIMA: MIMA lets the driver be the controller of how much assist and regen there will be, and when, thus the M for Manual IMA, or MIMA. It removes control of the IMA from the computer and puts in the drivers hands. A skilled MIMA driver (yes it involves skill) can boost their MPG by 10 20%, as they learn to be subtle and selective in using charge and putting it back The manual control immediately feels great, and therefore the first experience usually brings the MIMA Grin. V-Boost Immediately MIMA users realize that the MIMA system is limited severely in the MPG boost it can achieve almost exclusively by how much electric storage the car is carrying. The stock battery pack holds only 4 AH of use able capacity. Each use of assist to reduce the use of gas drops the charge on the small HV battery, and if assist is used heavily, you can run out of HV, and then the gas engine has no help in climbing hills, and it has to put power back into regen by putting mechanical power into the generator to put the charge back into the battery, and still power the car, so it is like climbing a forever hill. Once the pack charges back up, you get to try again and this time if you use assist sparingly, and regen whenever you can, you can reach a balance and keep a charge on the HV pack. You immediately want more electric though but want to avoid getting it from the gas.. The V-boost and the booster battery pack, are charged up with solar energy, or by pluging in to 120volt AC. When running with v-boost on, we make the IMA hybrid system behave like a plugged in rechargeable electric shaver, as long as you don't use the power faster than the charging system can replace it, you can shave forever, or in the case of the car, you can use much more assist, and the pack never needs recharging with the gas engine, so you get super MPG. Once the booster pack is empty, things change, and not only do you go back to having to worry about not running out of HV, but you are now carrying all of the dead weight of the batteries, and they are not helping at all, so the MPG will be worse. You want to be back home and plugged back into the solar panel before the charge is used up, so you never get into that situation. E-Wheel The drop down electrically driven wheel represents the biggest new concept here, and the one that generated to most interest, as it allows the ability to flip a switch, drop an electrically powered E-wheel and drive for 30 or more miles with pure electric drive. One day of solar charging, and I can go 30 or more miles driving at 30 MPH. This is free, and directly from the sun to the wheels with no carbon output. Infinite MPG A pictorial version of the modifications can be found here: Mikes Insight The recent news video gave people hope that there could be an answer. After talking to and reading all of the response that this video produced, It was kind of a wake up call to me. If I had some backing, I could make a universal E-wheel that could be attached to a square trailer hitch, which is already available for nearly all cars, light trucks, and SUV,s on the road today. The peak oil situation is real, and we need to conserve gas right now to give the other green energy solutions time to mature. There is still a lot of oil in the ground, but as energy cost go up, the cost of the solutions also go up, and the average persons ability to buy the solution will always be a bit out of reach for increasing numbers of people. It takes energy to produce the devices that can generate the energy, and as the dollar sinks to new lows in the world economy, and due to massive outsourcing of production, we increasingly depend on foreign sources for the solutions. Doug Hartley gives a nice overview of how we both see the next years unfolding in Dougs blog It can be a bit depressing to look at the current and future prospects, but the boy scouts motto of "Be Prepared" is good advice for us all, and if we act wisely and quickly, and in mass, the slope of decline can be extended so we have more time to make the required changes to present energy wasting lifestyle . An e-mail sent to me from a concerned mother in FL. Is representative on much of the e-mails and conversations that I have had. "Will this adapt to any make of car? Can this be put on a truck as well? I need to do something to help my four grown kids who have families and are ALL facing losing their homes due to the high prices of their commutes to and from work. This has just ruined our way of life and we are hopefull that this might be just what we need to turn things around for us. I drive a 2001 camry. The kids drive ford F150 trucks, a Dodge durango,my husband has a 2002(I think) GMC sanoma, my son has a dodge pickup also. Just wondering if we would qualify for any of these vehicles? Thank you and God bless you." The pressure is already on, home heating fuels of $4 a gallon, diesel fuel @ over $4 a gallon will effect the transportation cost for much of the goods we use. Why the urgency? Don't we have solar, wind, hydrogen , Ethanol , electric cars. I am encouraged by the progress that these technologies promise, but the scale of petroleum use and the enormous cost of bringing these technologies into widespread use, depends on a healthy economy with the resources to make it happen. Look at the exchange rate of the US dollar, and we see that we are not the economic super power that we were only a few years ago. Depending on new energy sources to allow us to continue our wasteful ways, is asking for failure. We need to conserve first, and change the way we live if sustainability is to be possible. 100 years from now, we will be either an extinct species in a recovering world, or a society that has learned to live in a sustainable way with nature. A massive change in each of our energy footprints could almost overnight make a huge change in how long we have to solve the massive problems we, or our children will face. A recent report shows that it takes 42 barrels of oil to produce a modern automobile. In times of decreasing energy availability, upgrading existing vehicles with an e-wheel would save that 42 barrels, and ease the financial burden that we each will face when our present 2-5 year old vehicle consumes too much gas for us to continue using it. An E-wheel retrofit will bring the MPG up to infinite for the people that can commute with pure electric. Other things to save energy: Winter in cold climates: Turn down the heat and put on more clothes, close off rooms, and even double up families and shut down houses in winter. Refrigerator and freezer retrofit with thermostatically controlled ducts that draw in outdoor air when it is below freezer temperatures, and switch back to the AC refrigeration when it is too warm. Car pool, reduce speed by leaving for work much earlier, more speed = more gas. Buy smaller cars, they take less materials and energy to make and run them Change to energy efficient mini fluorescent or LED lighting, and then only turn on the lights in the room that you are in. Variation, If everyone were to walk around at night with headlights that are solar charged during the day, they could leave all the lights off, we could cut energy use substantially virtually overnight. Carry the light with us instead of lighting rooms just so we will not have to walk into a dark room. Why do we continue to make and sell billions of non rechargeable batteries to power our high tec toys, when rechargeable batteries are available that can do the same job for only a small additional cost. The construction of both cells takes the same energy. More energy is not the answer, we need to use much much less. Our energy wasting way of life needs change and I pray that we can rise to the challenge. At first I felt we could convince the car companies to offer electric retrofits, but because they have so much momentum in their mindset of making new vehicles rather than retrofitting older ones, I doubt if simply showing that the Honda Insight can get 100 + MPG will be worth the effort. This is about saving gas with the lowest energy input. If the pickups ,SUV's, and Vans in the current fleet have an aftermarket E-Wheel option, new vehicle sales will virtually stop, as people will realize some better overall MPG with their present vehicle and will only need a new one when it rust out, at which point they just move the E-wheel to their new vehicle and off they go again. How do we make it happen? My present situation: I am 62, and my dear wife Sue of over 40 years is 72 and we do not have medical insurance, homeowners insurance or any liability insurance. Just can't afford it. My income for the last three years while I have been working on the modifications has been so low that I got an earned income credit, and no taxes for the last three years. We have some retirement savings, but if one serious illness happened, or a law suit we would get wiped out. A constant worry and stress in my life.I am investing some of my retirement to fund my experiments. That's where a big influx of money to the efforts would really make a difference.I need to set up the R&D shop to design and built this and make it safe and dependable. Without the supporters of my modifications to date, my car would not be where it is. All of the people that contributed to the effort have made it possible. The MIMA system schematics, and computer software are available for download from this site, and is open source so others can build their own and contribute to the project. The supporters: A MIMA customer John Snook, sent me a donation of $800 to cover my battery cost, so I could buy the E-tec motor that drives the donated used scooter wheel, with the donated CURTIS PWM motor controller, driving the donated wheel through a donated GATES Power Belt speed reducer. The Vicor company graciously donated the DC/DC converters that allowed me to build the first V-Boost system to prove that by shifting the cars power mix to the electric side of the equation, one could raise the MPG proportionately, and it became a Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) The non supporters: I tried every battery company looking for some donated batteries, and finally gave up and bought the Trojan AGM 31's, which John Snook was so generous to pay for. My car is a prototype of what is possible. All of this was developed and built by my hands, with my creativity and engineering skills in my shop for almost nothing. Where are the solutions that came from all of our tax money that was given to the large automakers? I will continue to struggle and use retirement money to proceed with the e-wheel as I can, because it is so important to our future, but with enough money to proceed more efficiently, the progress could be accelerated a hundred fold. What is the best use of my time? Mima only works on the Honda Insight, of which there are only ~10K . Raising MPG from 68 mpg to 80 MPG for 1000 miles will save 2.2 gallons of gas. If the E-wheel can take a 10 MPG vehicle 100gal/1000mi, and raise it to an average of 40 mpg, 25 gal/1000 miles, that would be a savings of 75 gal. If you would like to support the E-wheel project, please contact me at (860)935-5569 MIMA production will be continuing, but more slowly than I estimated,It could be late June before I am going to be shipping MIMA with the schedule of projects I have in front of me. Any one that wants to take over production of the MIMA systems to get them out faster, please contact me at the same number. Sincerely Mike Dabrowski