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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9uvn6a wrote

Reply to comment by Sea-Election-9168 in Kelley Stand is not plowed! No charging stations either! by SVTer

Why the downvotes? I want to buy an electric, and am trying to figure out how to address the situations that people are proposing as problematic. Why not just keep a small generator in the car? They are cheap and can run for hours on half a gallon of gas.

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Otto-Korrect t1_j9uzc0w wrote

If your question is serious, i can put you at ease. I've had mine since 2018 and have never run out of power. You have 'range anxiety' for the first week or two, then you just get to know what you can and can not do with it. Just like knowing you'll find gas stations on the way in a gas car.

The only thing I can't do it hop in the car for a 500 mile road trip without at least looking at the map to see where the on route charging stations are.

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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9v03q2 wrote

My question was serious. I get your point, but I’m a “belt and suspenders” kind of guy. Do you see a real problem with keeping a small generator in the car? They make them with spill-proof/leak-proof tanks, and the weight is less than many other items I keep in my car already.

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Otto-Korrect t1_j9v0t2f wrote

Technically, it would work. But...

to charge at a decent speed, you'd need a 50 amp 240 output, so not any tiny genrator. That will charge at about 30MPH.

If your generator only puts out 15-20 amps of 120v, you are looking at a charge rate of only 6mph. If you are stranded, yes better than nothing. Charge for a few hours and you may have what it takes to get to a charging station. But I wouldn't want to count on it often.

It sounds like something like the Bolt may fit your needs better. It has a gas engine that kicks in to charge the battery and/or run the car when the battery gets low. The batter is smaller, so only lasts for 25 miles or so I think, so for some people that is all they need for 'around town' driving.

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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9v1tlj wrote

Thanks for the information. Honestly, I’d be willing to wait a couple hours for the genny to get me out! When are they going to make a small electric pickup?

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Otto-Korrect t1_j9v2nb6 wrote

I'd be all over that! Something the size of the old Toyota Tacoma before they got bloated.

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__littlewolf__ t1_j9v4nub wrote

God, bloated is such a perfect way to describe car shapes these days! I miss more angular shapes on vehicles. Every car nowadays looks like it could be posted on the @roundboys Instagram.

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jsudarskyvt t1_j9vem8o wrote

The photo makes me believe he is stuck in the snow. I bet he has charge still.

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DillyDallyin t1_j9v8xnt wrote

The extra weight of the generator in your car would decrease your range which somewhat defeats the purpose

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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9v9dyy wrote

I’ve got a generator that weighs less than 50 pounds. How much would that affect range?

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kn4v3VT t1_j9vbtkb wrote

It wouldn’t, that amount of weight is negligible for range impact on most every EV with the exception of the shitty cheap first gen ones (looking at you Nissan leaf).

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jsudarskyvt t1_j9vdssi wrote

Not significantly. It's air resistance and wheel friction that matters with EV's.

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zipperkiller t1_j9vnqyw wrote

Is that the ford lightning? There’s a new coming Rivian that makes a pick up too

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tentativetheory t1_j9vyu9s wrote

The Bolt is a great car, but it’s fully electric with no range extender. The older Volt had the generator. Those are great too but they’ve been discontinued for some years now. There’s quite a few plug in hybrids on the market currently that offer similar functionality.

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whiskey_overboard t1_j9v4i1y wrote

Situation in pic should only happen in the rarest of cases.

The math doesn’t work out for a generator in most practical cases: 2200W Honda EU2200 has a 15a/120V connection. That’ll net ~1kW (4.5 mi) per hour. Much less if it’s cold as you also need to bleed power to keep the battery warm enough to charge.

Portable generator has zero practical use case for 99.99% of people’s daily usage. In an emergency or far-off grid situation? Maybe? But probably worth buying another few buckets of 5.56 for the prepper cave, lol.

If you’re driving enough that you need to recharge frequently, you’ll likely already have your own charger or know where a few extras or backups are if needed.

If you use the navigation, the car will yell at you about range or redirect you to charge if you won’t make it. If you’re anxious, charge early.

After 8mos and a cross-country road trip, I have no range anxiety. Anxiety about wall charging in sub-zero temps? Sure.

I agree: plates check out.

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kn4v3VT t1_j9vbj2g wrote

Also most generators do not put out anything close to utility grade power quality- this can wreak havoc on the cars internal AC to DC inverters. If you read the manual of any EV (which I highly recommend since it’s essentially a whole new technology that cannot be compared to internal combustion) they’ll tell you never to do that. I cringe (as someone with some electrical engineering chops) when I see folks on youtube do that shit to their $60k brand new EVs - which is why I’ll never buy a used one

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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9vc4uh wrote

Wow, prime consideration! I forgot about how “dirty” power is from a standard generator. Suppose I could get an inverter style with clean power

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kn4v3VT t1_j9vdqd7 wrote

It’s really not worth it because these cars hold huge amounts of electricity and even the best gas generators are hugely inefficient at converting the stored chemical-energy in gasoline to kilowatts- most of the energy is converted to heat and wasted. If this car is legitimately out of charge it was 💯driver stupidity and should be treated the same as someone who purposely drives around with their gas light on and then acts surprised when they’re stranded. This situation is super easy to avoid in a Tesla - if this was a Nissan leaf I say similar thing but have a bit more empathy for the car owner (they’d still be considered stupid in my mind but for other reasons). So this is either staged or some rich stupid asshole trying to get attention.

Teslas attract a ton of negative attention because they legitimately pose a threat to Gas cars and make a ton of financial sense from a total cost of ownership perspective. They’re super nice cars and have a great charging network that makes them super practical if you can afford one. You dont sacrifice anything really with a Tesla. These days especially Elon Lightning’s that attention away for being a dipshit, but lots of people still buy them and do stupid shit all the time because they can get attention if they do something stupid in a Tesla. All the gas-bros and petromasculine folks love to feed that attention. this thread is a prime example.

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Sea-Election-9168 t1_j9veup6 wrote

Any chance we will see a small 4wd electric pickup before too long?

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kn4v3VT t1_j9vfwb5 wrote

there are Tons of them in the works. and the more demand the market sees for them the more they'll respond, although it might be a while before the pricing starts to fall. that being said, even the Rivian R1T it out and its pricing is similar to premium pickup (74,800) - my buddy has a mid sized GMC that cost more than that.

For any non-tesla vehicle, because our government is in the pocket of Oil, they're not worth it because you cant reliably road trip with them. If we had a common charging standard that was federally enforced, i'd say we're on track - but charging is a hot mess around the country for everything that not tesla

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Shep_Book t1_j9vbkso wrote

Honestly, you’d need a pretty big generator. In cold weather, you need at least a 2-3kw of power to warm the battery in cold conditions. Then, you’d be left with whatever extra headroom you have from the generator to charge. So, a pretty big 4-5kw generator might get you 1-2kw of charge per hour.

A Model Y has a 72kwh battery, so you’d probably get about 2-3% an hour. (3-6 miles of charge per hour)

When doing road trips, superchargers are typically every 50-100 miles, sometimes a bit more. Route planning in the car does a pretty good job.

I’ve only ever had one leg of a trip feel sketchy. It was when I picked up a friend from an Air Force base out in the middle of nowhere Texas. 1.5 hours out and back to the nearest supercharger. Took about 85-90% of my charge.

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Curious_Buffalo_1206 t1_ja38fa0 wrote

Because it’s a really bad and impractical idea, honestly. Most gas generators don’t produce “clean” enough electricity to charge a car, unless it’s an expensive inverter. Forgive the oversimplification, I forget the proper electrical engineering terminology, but a regular gas generator will fry sensitive electronics. EV chargers will refuse to pull current from such a power source.

Gas generators run for hours on half a gallon of gas because you’re usually running a fridge, a furnace blower, and some lights off it. Average load of 100W or so? The Model X has a 100kWh battery.

There’s no free lunch here. A Tesla is only going to get 20 mpg or so when you account for the inherent inefficiencies to this process. You’re also carrying a lot of weight and volume for something that isn’t going to happen unless you’re an idiot. I don’t carry around a jerry can of gas in the winter. I just don’t go below half a tank. Same principle applies here.

The reverse process, where you use your car battery in a power outage as energy storage, is much more sensible.

If you insist on this, they have PHEVs that basically have a built in gas generator. And they’re usually cheaper, as they can get away with using a much smaller battery. Most driving is done for shorter trips, after all.

TLDR: the math doesn’t check out.

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