Comment by chadash
1 day ago
Most people (like me) don't have generators. But when I hear "oh, BTW this car can be a used as a generator for 48-72 hours in a power outage", that's a nice little selling point that might put me over the edge if i'm otherwise considering the car. No, this doesn't solve for Hurricane Katrina. But it does solve for a nor'easter.
My car is basically one big gas-powered generator that has the benefit of also not requiring a functional power station to refill itself.
It has other downsides, obviously. But the notion of "emergency power for your house" isn't really anything special.
It probably does though, unless you have stockpiled gas. If the power is down to the gas station, the pumps don't work.
My experience with power outages (after big summer storms, not a hurricane thank goodness) has been that my neighborhood is impacted, but that places nearby have power. They tend to restore commercial first, so the supercharger near me is up and running before my house.
> If the power is down to the gas station, the pumps don't work.
In places where long power outages are common (hurricane areas), many gas stations have their own generators (they also have a convenient source of fuel to run them!)
If the power is down to the charging station the chargers don't work, this is just as likely as the power being down at the gas station
21 replies →
> unless you have stockpiled gas
And are regularly rotating that stockpile, because gasoline has a shelf life measured in months
edit: Apparently this leans more technically-true factoid than fact, thank you replies
12 replies →
The Ford F150 Powerboost has an optional 7.2 kVA inverter, which I am not sure if there are any other vehicles that can do the same off a gas tank.
I am guessing that one of the use cases is a support unit to charge an EV just enough to get it to a charging station.
Ford has had options like this forever and it's usually targeted at farmers and ranchers, I think the first I've found was like a 77 or 78 f250 'rancher' that had a generator option on the main belt off the motor. The ads show a guy cutting boards with a skill saw to mend a fence or something.
edit: I think these also had a ford branded chainsaw over the wheel well on the other side of the engine bay.
3 replies →
I have one, and I have powered my house with it on a few occasions. I made the purchase after a friend of mine ran his for four days straight. I always fill up the tank if there are storms coming.
When I was shopping in 2025, this was the only truck with that kind of output.
I almost purchased that truck, but I needed a higher cargo capacity for my travel trailer, and the added batteries reduced it by 250lbs or so. The ability to plug a travel trailer directly into the truck and run it is really cool.
2024 and later Toyota Tacomas (and 4Runners and Landcriusers, I think) with the hybrid iForce Max power train have a 120V 2400W outlet. It will run briefly from the traction battery before starting the engine to recharge.
Solar panels can refill it during the day, and the car can keep your fridge and heat pump running through the night.
Can you actually run home appliances from a regular ICE car? My furnace blower uses ~1800 watts when it kicks in.
> Can you actually run home appliances from a regular ICE car?
You would need to add an accessory generator (which probably won't fit under the hood) and possibly upgrade the cooling system.
Mine, too. It's pretty great as a car. Gas goes in one hole, exhaust comes out of another, and the wheels go 'round and round. It's awesome.
As an electrical generator, it's really not very good. The alternator is rated at 120 Amps (bigger than many, smaller than others).
At 13.8v, that's only 1,656 Watts -- on a good day, with the engine wound up. But the engine won't be wound up. It will instead be idling. The output will be less than 1656 Watts.
It burns right around 0.6 gallons of gasoline per hour (ie 22kW!) while idling and doing ~nothing else. It holds 21 gallons of gas.
So the unachievable best-case of idling-and-doing-no-real-work means that if it starts with a full tank of fuel, it will run out in 35 hours.
And in the real world, it will be doing work since that's the whole point of the exercise. It will therefore use somewhat more than its do-nothing 0.6 gallons per hour idle consumption.
We can ignore the longevity issues of treating a gas-fired vehicle as a stationary generator (these are expensive parts that are getting abnormally heat-soaked) because this is a temporary solution to a temporary problem, but as a practical matter: I'll still need to fill it up with gas, however I do that[1], about every day.
And, sure: That can be a way to solve some problems. With a decent inverter stashed out of the weather, connected with appropriately-big cables, I can probably use it to run the gas-fired furnace, the fridge and freezer, some lights, and some digital entertainment. Maybe it can't run all of that at the same time, but I'm smart and I'll manage.
The gas-fired car probably is useful, as long as I can drive somewhere and fill it back up.
---
Or: I could just plug stuff into an appropriate EV. It can sit there quietly being the giant battery that it is, and I can drive it out every couple/three days, or maybe just once per week as some suggest, to fill it back up.
It won't have an idle baseload of anywhere near the equivalent of 0.6 gallons of gasoline and it will therefore respond well to intermittent, dynamic loads like heat and refrigeration.
The EV is probably more-useful, as long as I can drive somewhere and charge it back up.
---
[1]: Sure, sure. I can carry a large quantity of gasoline to make the trips more-worthwhile. I can even store some locally (it's a pain to keep it fresh, but do-able).
If I were into that kind of prepping then what would be my practical limit? An extra 40 gallons, for ~60 overall? Great! Now I can run the car/house combo for 3 days before heading back out, and the EV still probably wins on this metric.
Genuinely curious what you mean by this.