At the Plug-In show today I met with Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologieshttp://hevt.com/ (HEVT) President, Dr. Ali Emadi who's company converted a Ford F-150 pick-up truck to a plug-in hybrid vehicle. HEVT is a start-up located on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus and that licensed its core technology from the university.

"The Ford F-150 which is the most popular car in the car history worldwide is our first plug-in hybrid prototype. We added an electric motor to the differential and this one can go all electric and then switch automatically to hybrid... If you drive 30 miles a day it gets to 41 MPG [versus 16 MPG for the standard version]: 15 miles all electric range and the rest is hybrid... Through the University, we are working on Hummer H1 and Humvees... with prototypes expected next year ", said Emadi.

The cost for the conversion is currently around $60,000 but it's still at a proof of concept stage and Emadi hopes to bring that price tag much lower when the final product launches sometimes between a year or 2. HEVT secret sauce includes a series/parallel drivetrain, an integrated motor differential and an adaptive control unit aka the brain of the system. Emadi's video interview after the jump.