In Rosemount, Minn., on July 26, 2009, students at Dakota County Technical College announced they had produced a vehicle that could travel 170 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. They modeled the vehicle after the Toyota Prius, which has a hybrid gas/electric engine. The newer vehicle is designed to be plugged in, allowing its driver to simply recharge its 300-volt lithium battery via an outlet. Teachers and students said repeated tests showed the new hybrid worked as advertised. Even so, auto experts said it could take 18 months or more before the technology showed up on the market. Ben Studley was one of the students who worked on the hybrid. He said even he was shocked by its ultra-efficient performance, until he saw how consistent it was. The research was funded in part by a Minnesota Department of Commerce grant.
I would like to know what happened to this technology. Why wasn't it plugged in? Maybe Big Oil got ahold of it.
Robert M. Smith
Hermantown
