Quote:
Originally Posted by DonKarstedt
2/3 of this country's electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. What's the point of an electric vehicle if you have to burn gas to charge it up?
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Good question. Hybrid cars do get better fuel economy than their counterparts, but for me it’s not about fuel economy or being green; although I prefer being conservative with available resources, everything else being equal. And if it saves me money in the process, even better.
I like the idea of eliminating generators completely as long as I can still run my air conditioner overnight without the noise; assuming it’s allowed at all. I’ve camped in many National Parks without shore power where generators could only be run 1 hour in morning and 1 hour in evening. Also, in addition to the silence, I like not smelling exhaust fumes or worrying about its safety (granted, batteries have fire safety so not 100% safe either, but nothing is).
From a technical standpoint, it’s very easy to generate electricity with the vehicle’s engine rather than have a separate “generator”. It’s been done for 100 years. The problem is that we shouldn’t idle a large V8 all day to power a <100-Watt TV, or even a 1,000-Watt A/C. That’s where systems like the Volta have stepped in, right?
However, from my perspective, why add aftermarket large lithium batteries to power the house, and separate engine-driven alternator, if the chassis OEM can do it better and a lot cheaper? The OEM can also put that battery capacity and generator to work while driving to improve performance and fuel economy (a small amount — it won’t be much in large motorhome).
P.S. — From engineering standpoint, real issue is battery size. The mild hybrids coming out first don’t have enough battery energy capacity to be very useful, so if we want the entire system to be from Ford, GM, RAM, etc. we’ll have to step up to a plug-in hybrid, which have much larger battery bank (10~20 kWh should do). Mild hybrids often have less than 1 kWh battery size. That’s enough to run microwave for a few minutes, but not A/C.
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