Online discussion at Accord Plug-in Hybrid Forum

We have an older Honda Accord Hybrid that we would like to convert to a Plugin Hybrid. Can anyone tell me what I might expect to pay someone to do this conversion?

Can't provide you cost estimate I'm afraid, but some things you'll need to do...
1) Replace transmission with 2 electric motors. (the original Honda Hybrid used Honda inline IMA, not parallel Hybrid system).
2) Replace NiMH hybrid battery with a L-ION hybrid battery. NiMH will take up to 2 days to charge, not at all practical.
3) With all new electric motors and new L-Ion battery, you'll need an entirely new software system to handle hand-off between Engine and Electric.


In short, the power train and hybrid battery pack of the original Honda Hybrid is just not designed for this.
If you have a 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid, this would likely be a much simpler effort. Just increase the battery capacity and install charging circuit. Minor parameter modifications to the car software.

I really don't know a lot about this car and it sounds like you know way more than me. Forgive me for asking a couple more questions that are probably not very thought out.

I was hoping that there might be some minor things that we could do to just charge/top off the NiMH batteries a little each night. The car would mostly be driven to and from work which is about 20 miles round trip. Are there higher capacity NiMH batteries today than there were 5 years ago when the car was made? Can't we upgrade to a higher capacity NiMH battery?

We basically want an inexpensive cheap version of a plugin car. The trade-in value of the 2008 Civic Hybrid that we has is not much more than $10,000. Even if we have to spend $3000 bucks on a conversion it's still a lot less than a nice new Plugin.