VitaminJ said:
... A trailer like the Toyota with about 2-3 feet distance between the axle and the tongue would be such a pain in the ass to reverse with. My guess is you've never had a trailer with such a short pivot point. How's the saying go? Reversing with that trailer would be like trying to push a wet noodle up a dog's ass.
You are definitely not getting the concept at all, so it's probably best to just give it a break. I actually do have a fair amount of experience with trailers and have owned trailers for a good part of my adult life.
I'm happy to hear that you're done on this thread. You seem like a young energictic guy and I wish you the best of luck. Please don't get yourself killed or injure somebody else with your experiments.
People in this EV business, like myself, don't just build stuff for entertainment (unless they have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of money to waste). There would need to be a business model which has never been addressed in this thread. I personally don't want or need such a device, and I think the whole concept is rather silly to be honest:
1) The people who are driving a limited range car like a LEAF and can't afford to buy a proper car for the travel they intend to do aren't going to spend a whole lot of money on anything at all.
2) The people who have the money will just get the proper car for the trips they intend to drive.
Most people, however, are going to borrow, rent, or otherwise get a "real" car for those few long trips, or they are going to fly, or take a bus, or a train long before they're going to pay for something like this, or attempt to build something like this.
Since any car would have to have some minimum amount of set up (trailer hitch, roof rack for your idea), you can't even just offer it as a plug-and-play option.
Whatever hardware is used will cost many thousands of dollars (yes, hobbyists and experimenters can scrounge up something cheaper for a one-off). The people who would want to use it won't pay thousands of dollars to acquire one, and it's even unlikely they would rent it for a reasonable price. Keep in mind, I was part-owner of the very first DC fast charger on the ChargePoint network at the same time people were literally calculating whether the was cheaper to Just-Drive-The-Prius(tm) or use our charger.
So, the idea will never die and there will be guys like you're doing all kinds of fun experiments. But there is absolutely zero business model for this. From a practical standpoint, it's probably equally as dumb. The BMW i3 has a gasoline generator option already, which cost about $4000 extra and doesn't have enough power to push the car up a hill. I suspect that the people who paid the extra money for gasoline would've been just as happy to pay the extra money for additional range with a battery.
One project we are working on is additional batteries, which I think are a perfectly logical but not cheap. They would be completely transparent to the end-user, require zero maintenance, no storage, no rentals, etc. The cost is somewhere around $500-$1000 per kilowatt hour installed. The 15 to 30 kWh pack that we envision will extend range by about 45 to 90 miles.
This project is for the RAV4 EV, which already has a 125 mile range, so this will put the car very close to on par with the current 200 mile range cars out there.
People who can afford and would consider this option can also afford whatever kind of crazy fossil fuel burning pusher or generator that you can dream up. I suspect they would chose batteries over pollution and noise every day.
Good luck and stay safe.
