The worlds first Hybrid Leaf

Piss poor mileage, and it stinks too, but in a pinch it'll get you home!

Honda does make some that run on propane.

Or speaking of kits...

http://www.propane-generators.com/eu2000i_kits.htm

So it has been confirmed that you can run the L1 Leaf charger on an EU-2000? Does it work OK on a continuous basis without overloading the generator? What is the run time for 1 gallon of gas?

Now that is hilarious! So I'd assume that would be like plugging into any old 120volt outlet.

Then the question becomes how much range could you get out of that? And at what cost of time? Ie... how long does that thing go before its done.

The next question is can you plug the leaf directly into 220? I don't know. And if yes... Whats the smallest 220volt generator out there.

In conversations with a Nissan engineer during the first LEAF delivery in AZ. I asked about this same concept and using a Honda generator. He said they had tried several and for the most part they worked, but he did say the only one they had a problem with was a Honda. He didn't say exactly what the problem was or the model number.

Not to be discouraged I looked up a Yamaha EF2000iS generator. It is a 2000W peak, 1600W continuous inverter with a pure sine wave. Wisesales.com has or had (I last looked 2/20/11) on sale for $899.99. with free shipping. I then sent the specs to my dealer and asked if they could get an answer from Nissan. The word came back that it would work. The car on 120V apparently draws somewhere around 1300W.

Ingineer please post how the Honda works out. I assume that it must be okay and that it must have similar specs in relation to the Yamaha.

Now that's progress. An electric car that burns gas!! WOW!. :?

Cute.
We were going through the possible ways to get a Leaf to travel 300 miles and came up with a few ideas:
1. Put it on a truck or trailer - of course it would work, but not much fun
2. Couch-surf and outlet-surf for 3 days and blog about who we meet and what they think of the car.
3. Run an extension cord from an inverter plugged into a gas car and follow very closely.

We did not get as far as looking into whether any car-powered inverter could charge the Leaf (the entertainment value of the mental image is high but so are the difficulty and danger of the extension cord plan) but I did wonder whether the Leaf could accept a charge while driving.

If I carried a generator or installed a lot of solar panels, how electrically hard would it be to contribute to running the car while driving?

As far as I know, you can't start Leaf when you have it plugged in.

One can only assume that Ingineer's setup does not involve running the generator in the trunk, but rather setting it on the ground next to the car and charging for a while in a pinch. Hardly ideal but if you needed a few extra miles to get home or to a charging station it might be a lot better than a tow truck (which by the way would have a much bigger carbon footprint than that little Honda)

Also, can we assume that the Honda isn't connected when the vehicle is in motion? The Leaf will not move if it is connected, but what happens if you already have it turned on, THEN connect the L1 charger?

If it were possible to defeat the interlock and wanted to add power while driving with this arrangement, possibilities include lashing the thing to the roof or some kind of bracket on the back. But you'd only be picking up 4 miles per hour at best. The eu2000 can run up to 16 hours on a gallon of gas, which would be 64mpg, but that's lightly loaded, it's probably more like 4 hours, which would only be 16mpg.

That seems like death by carbon monoxide poisoning just waiting to happen.

This can't work.. the car has a 100 mile range, so at 35 miles per hour it will drain the battery in 3 hours. However, at 110v it takes over 12 hours to recharge-- so common sense dictates that the draw on the battery is much greater than the rate of recharge.

This is really intended for emergency charging only.

Moving the generator outside the car to do the charging is easy.

Dealing with gasoline fumes inside the car all the rest of the time is much more difficult.

Another Option:
If another (probably ICE) vehicle would be a willing "donor", an hour's "transfusion" using an inverter might be a reasonable solution.

There are many 1500 watt continuous, 3000 watt peak, pure sine wave inverters for $200 to $600. It would need to be attached with heavy (at least 100 amp) cables to the donor battery, and the ICE might need to run its engine most of the time to keep its battery from going flat.

But, other than the problem of finding a willing donor vehicle to "suckle" from, toting the inverter is a lot cleaner than toting gasoline.

SteveInSeattle said:

This can't work.. the car has a 100 mile range, so at 35 miles per hour it will drain the battery in 3 hours. However, at 110v it takes over 12 hours to recharge-- so common sense dictates that the draw on the battery is much greater than the rate of recharge.

Click to expand...

It works as long as your average speed is 4mph! (which can be achieved by being parked for an hour, then driving for 5 minutes)

LTLFTcomposite said:

So it has been confirmed that you can run the L1 Leaf charger on an EU-2000? Does it work OK on a continuous basis without overloading the generator? What is the run time for 1 gallon of gas?

Click to expand...

Yes, it seems to run fine with the caveat that you have to create a jumper plug that bonds ground to neutral to bypass the ground verification feature of the EVSE. If you don't do this, the EVSE will just sit there and blink it's green light. It is simple as buying a standard 120v plug (NEMA 5-15P) and putting a jumper wire in it from ground (green) to Neutral (silver/white) and plugging it into the extra outlet on the EU2000.

It will run about 4 hours on a gallon of gas giving you almost 5kWh of charge.

-Phil

I've had similar thoughts myself. It would be awesome if there were a way to rig it directly into the charger hump in the back and to defeat the interlock so you can run it while the car is in motion... It's a DIY Chevy Volt! :lol:

Get on that ASAP, would you please Phil? You seem to be the pre-eminent LEAF hacker at the moment! As for the emissions, just run a sealed vent tube out the rear window or something.

Ingineer said:

It will run about 4 hours on a gallon of gas giving you almost 5kWh of charge.

Click to expand...

So that equates to roughly 21MPG. And, assuming you could defeat the interlock, you could actually drive it home if you were to stay under 5MPH the whole time.

cdub said:

That seems like death by carbon monoxide poisoning just waiting to happen.

Click to expand...

Jeeze you guys can be so silly sometimes! Of course it would kill you pretty quick if you tried to run it in the car!

The picture was clearly comedy!

The generator is so noisy and stinky that you wouldn't intentionally be in the car with it for more than about 30 seconds before deciding it's a bad idea!

I did in seriousness wanted to check if the generator would handle the EVSE and work properly, and I confirmed that it will with the caveat I mentioned in my previous post.

-Phil

SteveInSeattle said:

This can't work.. the car has a 100 mile range, so at 35 miles per hour it will drain the battery in 3 hours. However, at 110v it takes over 12 hours to recharge-- so common sense dictates that the draw on the battery is much greater than the rate of recharge.

Click to expand...

It takes even longer at 110v. Thankfully there hasn't been such a voltage in the united states in the better part of a century!

It's 120V, not 110V! Unless you are a WWII veteran, you shouldn't be using "110V"!

-Phil

garygid said:

This is really intended for emergency charging only.

Moving the generator outside the car to do the charging is easy.

Dealing with gasoline fumes inside the car all the rest of the time is much more difficult.

Click to expand...

Good idea. If you had a one way trip of say 60 miles where you knew ahead of time that you could not top off your charge for the way home, this could be an option. A few hours running off a generator like the EU2000, which is very efficient could give you the extra miles you need to return. They don't weigh all that much either. I already own a EU3000is but I'm not about try and lift that thing (148 pounds) to place it in the trunk, although it would fit. Using a gallon a gas is better then using my Expedition for the same 120 mile round trip.

GeekEV said:

I've had similar thoughts myself. It would be awesome if there were a way to rig it directly into the charger hump in the back and to defeat the interlock so you can run it while the car is in motion... It's a DIY Chevy Volt! :lol:

Get on that ASAP, would you please Phil? You seem to be the pre-eminent LEAF hacker at the moment! As for the emissions, just run a sealed vent tube out the rear window or something.

Ingineer said:

It will run about 4 hours on a gallon of gas giving you almost 5kWh of charge.

Click to expand...

So that equates to roughly 21MPG. And, assuming you could defeat the interlock, you could actually drive it home if you were to stay under 5MPH the whole time.

Click to expand...

Defeating the interlock may be non-trivial. Besides, this is almost not worth it, even if you took 2 EU2000i's, (you pretty easily configure them to produce 240V and then charge at 2.8kW) it's still not really going to add much range.

The safer and better way (and likely easier) is to get a wrecked 2004-2009 Prius and slice the front end off, and turn it into a "pusher" trailer:


(http://www.jstraubel.com/EVpusher/EVpusher2.htm)


(http://www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htm)


(http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm)

You'd probably get close to 40mpg and could have unlimited range!

-Phil

GeekEV said:

As for the emissions, just run a sealed vent tube out the rear window or something.

Click to expand...

I think you would be better to add a hitch and cargo carrier to the rear.

This would be a true range extender not a means to drive the car.

Unfortunately it may only add 5 miles per hour. So if you drive two hours at 50mph (100 miles) this would only get you an extra 10 miles. By the time you get a large enough generator (4000 rated watts?) you may find the efficiency will be rather poor just like plauges the GM Volt.