In Google's case, its Mountain View campus has 100 available charging stations for its share-use fleet of converted plug-ins available to its employees.
Hundreds of the Priuses have already been converted to plug-in hybrids, in which some of the electricity comes from plugging into the grid rather than using the gasoline engine to drive a generator.
The utility owns Sparky, a Prius converted to plug-in operation by EnergyCS of Monrovia, Calif.
Thanks to its efforts, the number of vehicles converted to plug-in status seems likely to soar from a handful today to hundreds within a year.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the research arm of America's power utilities, has joined up with DaimlerChrysler for a trial in which over two dozen of its Sprinter vans will be converted into plug-ins.
To learn whether this was more theory than reality, I spent a week driving a 2005 Toyota Prius converted by Plug-In Solutions of San Juan Capistrano, Calif., which offers a system designed to allow electric-only driving as far as 50 miles at up to 52 miles per hour.
Answering Kramer, Muller cites recent research by Consumer Reports showing that converting to plug-in hybrids costs $10,000, but the batteries have to be replaced at the end of three years.
Across the street from City Hall, some drivers are already plugging converted hybrids into a row of charging stations.
In order for students to obtain a better understanding of the architecture of these vehicles, a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle was converted into a plug-in series hybrid electric vehicle with a generator that runs on used canola oil biodiesel.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) also authorized federal tax credits for converted plug-ins, though the credit is lower than for new PEVs.
In 2004, Mr. Grembam said, it was converted to use a plug – and an added battery pack larger than the one provided as standard by Toyota – so that it could run for a number of miles purely on electricity.
