Hello, please change the title to "hmmm". Thank you.
E: Oh, it's gen ai. Fuck...
This is basically what every EREV is. The generator is just integrated into the car, otherwise it's essentially the same thing.
At the same time, I've wondered if it would be helpful for EVs on some long-distance road trips to tow/stow a generator for overnight and emergency charging. Charging stations are popping up more and more, but if you're saddled with an obsolete or under-served charging port type (e.g. Nissan Leaf), having a generator would be valuable insurance.
Every EV can just hook up with a (mostly) passive adapter to any outlet and get a charge. It won't be fast (especially if you are cursed with a 110V outlet), but even in the boonies an overnight trickle charge will get you to the nearest fast charger. Just get the relevant adapters for your car.
This is basically what your generator would do except you want to lug it around instead of leveraging the cables that we pulled within driving distance of everywhere but the most remote trails? The whole point of electricity is its versatility and ubiquity!
FYI using a wall plug to charge an EV is a perfectly normal thing to do. For a small(ish) commute, regular 220V@10A is way more than enough to get back to full overnight. It won't give you 500 km of range, but only freaks and truckers drive 500 km every day.
If we are going that direction, why not battery packs that fit in the trunk?
It's also how modern freight trains work minus the battery. The big diesel engines only produce the electricity for the electric motors.
Hate to be that guy, but... Refaccionaria. AI sloppity slop 😔
Looking at the people on the sidewalk is enough to see it.
I mean, I'm not going to say that it's or not an artificially made picture, but "refaccionaria" is a perfectly cromulent word in Spanish: Refaccionaria at the Diccionario de la Lengua Española.
Fucking slop alright
I got triggered on this! Very weird place to put a huge OXXO sign like this. They have probably done it to underline their Gas Station chain roots. It is just stupid in my eyes to do it in a city where your convenience store is located in densely packed street. Maybe on the roof or something but not on the street so close to your building.
I’m not sure about this, surely an EV wouldn’t allow charging while in motion as a safety measure against driving off while plugged in?
But then, there’s this photo right here unless I’ve been suckered into believing AI edits again.
Yeah, that's supposed to be impossible. Either they're not moving and it's a staged shot (unlikely, since they're in the middle of traffic and there appears to be motion blur), or they've fiddled with the car to make it think the charging door is closed, or it's an edit.
I'm suspicious of the motion blur, personally, because the traffic looks too tight to be moving much, so I suspect an edit
Giving the photo the benefit of the doubt, it's also possible that this Tesla owner had to bring a generator somewhere for unrelated reasons, and thought it would be "funny" to hook it up to the charge port on his car as a joke.
My point is that wouldn't work, unless the car was in park. A Tesla will simply refuse to move if a charger is connected
Sus
Last I heard it was a performance art piece to illicit this type of conversation about where the electricity comes from.
That's a stupid conversation, though.
Electricity is made in huge power plants, which are a lot more efficient due to their size.
And a wider EV adoption allows for more renewable energy generation, since their batteries can act as a buffer to balance out the power grid.
With a smart meter, you can set your charger to draw power when the price of electricity is low (like when the sun is shining and its windy, so renewables produce a lot of power). Thereby consuming the peak power output.
And when there's no wind and no sun, you can sell a part of your battery charge back.
Except every EV I’ve been in will refuse to shift out of park if the charging cable is plugged in. Otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtS4h2az9Jo&t=48
It can be plugged in with the generator on, so no issue. Not that this image isn't fake as fuck - the generator isn't secured, and it's connecting the AC generator plug directly to the EV port with a cable instead of using an EV charger. There are (were) some actual attempts at this: https://www.ecomotorsnews.com/en/news/electric-range-a-battery-trailer-reopens-the-long-distance-mobility-debate
Not sure why, but there seems to be a lot AI slop that's basically this, except they usually have these ridiculous industrial generators with plumes of coal smoke.
A couple manufacturers were showing off EREV at the big manufacturer auto show, basically EV with a small gas engine to extend the range. Less motor than a hybrid, but enough to get some pretty ridiculous range out of a single combined charge/tank. Basically what this image is implying.
Seems like a decent idea for people that use their vehicle for longer distances.
BMW did it long ago in the i3 with the range extender. Not the best attempt though. They made it tiny, but it still had a heavy battery (though obviously not a very big one, just heavy for a car of this size), so to get the weight down, they used carbon fiber, but it was supposed to be an economy car and now with carbon fiber it was expensive.
Idea itself is not bad though.
Sounds like a GM Volt (not Bolt) or a BMW i3. Good thing both models were discontinued. Just in time for gas prices to go up again, right on schedule.
this is a great idea! love it. can we skip the small engine and just install a small fission reactor instead?
im affraid we cannot.
They're doing it wrong. They need a small wind turbine on the back. As they drive, the turbine spins, producing energy which charges the car, which is then used to drive, which further spins the turbines! There is no flaw to this logic! ~/s~
so out in the utah salt flats they're always trying new and ridiculous looking things. There was a vehicle i remember seeing similar to this one:
the turbine was in the back and the wind provided all the motive force for the vehicle. and it worked! And the blades were not contained so it could chop the fuck out of something that got too close, absolute deathtrap. but powered by wind alone so if you had the right geography, like you live in wyoming or something you got a free ride. pop class 2 electric hub motor on that for windless days, fix the deathtrap part and you have an ideal vehicle if you ask me.
I'm willing to bet it would've been more efficient (but less maneuverable/flexible in its direction of travel) with a sail, just because that would avoid the electric conversion losses.
there were no electric conversions. it just went fan to wheel. it was a really neat vehicle. i think the dude died because he fell backward into the fan. i can't remember, just that's what my anxiety told me was going to happen eventually. i think it could get up to 60mph. it could go faster than the wind and travel into the wind also.
Not buying it: How would you charge (generator) and discharge (motor) the car at the same time? The electronics and software is designed to only charge the battery when parked. My car won't even shift into gear if it's plugged in.
There is a huge missed opportunity of having modular battery packs that you can load into EVs.
You don’t need a huge battery for everyday, in fact it makes your drive less efficient.
What if there were standards and you could go to a gas station and rent some packs. Put them in the trunk (there would be slots and/or standard connectors), and then drive off.
Once road trip is over you return the packs (or you could buy instead of rent).
You can also just swap the packs in gas stations with fully charged equivalent, making long trips more flexible.
I think china did something like that with scooters.
There were attempts, but suvh a system just doesn't work reliably. The pack has to be replaced by robots since it's under your car (has to be due to space constrains and more importantly weight), and the amount of moving parts, reliability and safety concerns were a constant issue.
For scooters it's no problem given the way smaller size and optimal position inside the chassis, but for cars this concept hardly works properly.
As funny as this is... Dodge released a fully electric truck that contains a V6 generator. Goes 690 miles one trip and can pull 14,000lbs.
Would some sort of solar panel + battery array combo work in a similar way?
Honestly, a car with a small urban autonomy battery with a system where the rest of the battery is on a trailer would be a pretty awesome system, but it would require some massive adoption and car manufacturers are just going with ridiculously large batteries and fast charging for two reasons: they can sell it for more, and fast charging wears out the battery faster and requires more proprietary maintenance as a result.
A lot of EV innovations that could have been have been denied entry suspiciously when they've reached the bureaucratic industrial standardization that most major car manufacturers just seem to be able to gloss over. The car industry doesn't want to see the profits from proprietary parts and maintenance go, and nothing beats a combustion engine for that. I still miss the Sono Sion, an EV with solar panels which would have been perfect for people who use their cars occasionally on the weekend and rental services. At least Aptera is still going strong.
For things that are "hmmm".
Rule 1: All post titles except for meta posts should be just plain "hmmm" and nothing else, no emotes, no capitalisation, no extending it to "hmmmm" etc.
