Vincent said:
The generator that powers the Level 3 charger is 95% efficient. It is fully integrated into the truck and uses the truck's engine to act as the power source for the Level 3 charger. The generator is a 60kW 3-phase unit. Note that the vehicle used to test the mobile application of the DC charger was the Mitsubishi iMiev. Providing a full Level 3 charge (85% of full battery capacity) on the iMiev required 20 minutes and used one gallon of diesel.I know that the battery pack on the Leaf has a different capacity.
There is no way you are converting 95% of the energy of a gallon of diesel into electricity (~38 kWh -> ~36 kWh.) for one reason alone - the truck's engine from which your generator draw's it's kinetic energy to convert to electricity is no more than 45% efficient at it's optimal loading point and most likely less than that since it's not optimized for power generation.
But for the sake of the argument let's assume it's 45% efficient so it's able to convert a gallon of diesel (38 kWh equivalent) into 17 kWh equivalent of kinetic energy. Then your generator which is 95% efficient is able to covert the 17 kWh into 16 kWh of electricity. (This still ignores any conversion losses of the DC quick charger itself which must convert the 3-phase AC to DC for the car - this should be 5% or less, though)
Still quite a bit short of a full charge for the Leaf, but enough to drive it about 50 miles or so - basically equivalent to the appx 50 mpg a TDI gets on the highway. Can't complain about that if you are stranded and need a mobile quick charge to get you to the nearest fixed charging point, though.
It would be interesting to see the official specs, though.
Vincent said:
*In the interest of full-disclosure, I work for Real Power, the company that created the Mobile DC Charging prototype vehicle.
Funny - your original post indicated that you were a third party. Might want to update that.