Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob KellyIII
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lets say we take a Tesla a good established model that works the best.... hook a small trailer to it with a decent size generator on it.... and just fire up the generator when the batteries are 1/4 down..... it's not rocket science but people are waiting for the manifacturers to come up with the Holey grail but they always look at the bottom line
and are not looking for the perfect car they want the best selling car.... there is a big difference.
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the problem with the senerio that I just made with the Tesla towing the generator is the generator is going to cost you more in gasoline than a normal car would.... you know that already..... the problem isn't the electric car, the problem is charging it.
the idea of charging it at home after work is a great one..... but what about trips ?
having to find a charging station and then waiting an hour or 2 just to charge is silly
so tow your generator with you.....
the generator can be made to sip gas not guzzle it but they haven't been forced to change yet... so they haven't
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You're missing a fundamental sizing problem. It may not be rocket science, but the fact is that it *is* actually science that defines both the problems and the solutions. Is the generator supposed to be able to create enough electricity for the car to function? Or is it to create electricity while off the grid, and you have a couple hours to wait for it to do so? If it's to keep the car functional, it needs to provide enough horsepower to then create enough electric energy for the motor to work as designed. So the generator needs to be sized at whatever hp you want the car to behave at. So that's 100-150 hp. Guess what - a 100-150 hp generator sounds just about the size of a small 4-cylinder car engine, that is already being used in hybrids. Towing an extra car engine behind a fully electric car adds hundreds of pounds, which if not used often, is a tremendous waste (and a huge performance penalty). If instead the plan is to have a smaller 10 - 20 hp engine to just be able to trickle charge the batteries at a stop when you have a few hours, it runs into a different problem. You'd be sitting there waiting for hours for the battery to recharge, as the generator is only putting the equivalent of 10-20 hp in.
It doesn't work. Penciling out the power requirements and working through the scenarios makes it abundantly clear. The tradeoff that makes hybrids functional is that they don't have much battery weight, so it's a gas drivetrain + an electric motor, but not enough batteries to solely rely on battery range. Adding a gas drivetrain onto a fully electric car that is also carrying around thousands of pounds of battery doesn't solve any problem - it just causes new ones.