Comment by geokon
14 hours ago
Theoretically couldn't you take an electric car and put an off-the-shelf generator in your frunk and wire it up to charge the battery as you drive?
14 hours ago
Theoretically couldn't you take an electric car and put an off-the-shelf generator in your frunk and wire it up to charge the battery as you drive?
My PHEV won't 'start' while plugged in. You'd need to bypass the usual charger mechanisms, and then the computer seems likely to get mad...
A minor inconvenience compared to the thousands of charger cables and wall boxes that would charge driving the cars for a very small moment.
>>and put an off-the-shelf generator
Even my really underpowered PHEV has a 65kW electric motor. No "off the shelf generator" can generate 65kW, in fact it would be a huge unit that could.
We could of course say - well, it doesn't need to match peak usage, it just has to charge the battery faster than it depletes - you still probably need around 20kW for steady motorway driving, and that's a pretty hefty generator.
I don't think you need to have it match the depletion rate. Even at say 10kW you'd doubling the effective range. The point is people want to be able to use their car for that twice a year road trip, or drive to the inlaws for Thanksgiving. If you can attach something that extends the range for these occasion then that's probably enough.
Furthermore, the generator can run 24/7, but realistically you will at most drive ~6 hours a day. So for a leisurely road-trip this may be enough to avoid needing stops at charging stations
20kw would be enough to maintain the battery though? So you could halve that and 'only' double the range in the worst case.