Heresy, I know, generator trailer

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bobpa49er

New member
Joined
Aug 7, 2011
Messages
1
Has anybody besides EVSE tried working on the charge while moving idea? A light weight generator on a trailer (2 - 300 pounds,) could easily supply 30 amp 240 volts power for L2 charging and even improve the aerodymanics of the car in the wind at speed for less drag to efficiently solve the occasional trip aspirations of the Leaf owner, while having neglible effect the rest of the time on range, performance, space, utility, etc. If the charge while moving hurdle is a reasonably obtainable goal the rest is easy.
 
Take a look at a number of the other threads on here. It has been extensively discussed before...

bobpa49er said:
Has anybody besides EVSE tried working on the charge while moving idea? A light weight generator on a trailer (2 - 300 pounds,) could easily supply 30 amp 240 volts power for L2 charging and even improve the aerodymanics of the car in the wind at speed for less drag to efficiently solve the occasional trip aspirations of the Leaf owner, while having neglible effect the rest of the time on range, performance, space, utility, etc. If the charge while moving hurdle is a reasonably obtainable goal the rest is easy.
 
Bob, there is guy here who converts Diahatsus and he had a small trailer in which he had extra batteries abd a generator.
He used to go back & forth Sydney to Melbourne, 650 miles and it worked well under motorway conditions.
Sorry, I don't know what size generator he used.
Google Blade Electric Vehicles.
Barry
 
I can't think of a more inefficient and pollution rich way to travel...

Barry said:
Bob, there is guy here who converts Diahatsus and he had a small trailer in which he had extra batteries abd a generator.
He used to go back & forth Sydney to Melbourne, 650 miles and it worked well under motorway conditions.
Barry
 
This has been done, many years ago with the Toyota Rav4EV, see this link on Darrels page:

http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
I can't think of a more inefficient and pollution rich way to travel...

you would still get 70 miles of pure electric but would not have to stop to go 100 miles

It beats dragging around the engine every day, if you need it or not.
I think that a generator that can be taken in and out of the car would be the best solution.
 
The typical small utility gas generator produces something like 10 times the emissions of today's cars. Thus to go 100 miles, you would likely be producing the emissions of a car going 10,000 miles. It kind of defeats part of the purpose of an EV...

Mx5racer said:
I can't think of a more inefficient and pollution rich way to travel...

you would still get 70 miles of pure electric but would not have to stop to go 100 miles

It beats dragging around the engine every day, if you need it or not.
I think that a generator that can be taken in and out of the car would be the best solution.
 
With all the emissions issues of portable generators and trying to integrate putting energy into the car while it's on (The J1772 port won't work while the car is in motion, you'd have a cable going to it... etc...), pusher trailers are actually a pretty cool inexpensive idea in the grand picture of things. JB Straubel is one of the fellows whos made one, he designs his own controllers for EVs so he has a pretty good idea of the tradeoffs!

http://www.jstraubel.com/EVpusher/EVpusher2.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
JB Straubel is now at Tesla motors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JB_Straubel" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Mx5racer said:
I can't think of a more inefficient and pollution rich way to travel...

you would still get 70 miles of pure electric but would not have to stop to go 100 miles

It beats dragging around the engine every day, if you need it or not.
I think that a generator that can be taken in and out of the car would be the best solution.
The difficutly is how clean is the engine you're running. Modern car engines still burn gas but they do it pretty cleanly 10 - 100+ times cleaner than a typical gasoline or diesel generator. You have to run the numbers for the particular generator you're looking at, but in general, the emissions are not good for a generator.
 
The case I mentioned was because he does conversions commercially and he had to get his demo car interstate
for sales demonstrations etc. It was not an exercise in efficient travel.

The Leaf will be on sale here in the first quarter of next year, so it is said.
They are not taking orders/deposits yet. No idea of price either.
 
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