Yes, but it would only do so when you had to use it. If you did most of your driving locally and then rented this for the occasional long trip, it wouldn't be defeating the purpose. The alternative would be to own a gas car and use that for all your driving.Keep in mind that towing an electric generator behind the car is going to reduce energy efficiency; in other words, it will need to use more electricity to keep up to the same speeds as when you don't have the trailer.
Also, wouldn't towing around a gasoline-burning controlled-combustion power source defeat the purpose of buying a car that doesn't use a gasoline-burning controlled-combustion power source?
That's a good point.
It would be slightly easier to just modify the car for solar recharging, though. The added weight wouldn't be enough to have a noticeable impact on electricity usage and, even if it was enough, the car would be recharging itself constantly while in use.
It would be slightly easier to just modify the car for solar recharging, though. The added weight wouldn't be enough to have a noticeable impact on electricity usage and, even if it was enough, the car would be recharging itself constantly while in use.
Not practical. A typical solar panel gets about 150 watts per square meter, so you'd need at least 20 square meters to give you the 3 kW a Leaf needs, and closer to 100 square meters for a Tesla Roadster. I'll let you figure out where to put 20 square meters of photovoltaic panelling on a Leaf.
And, of course, these numbers assume you're going to be driving in sunlight. A cloudy day, a drive through a forest, or even night driving will all mess you up.
Missed this earlier: I'd assume that you could just fuel the tender up again, right? It's just a gas generator. So range is effectively unlimited, in the same way a gas car is.Yeah, but it's not $12/day, it's $12, plus $9/hr of drive time. You'd need this for long hauls, so no limited mileage and you'd probably be putting quite a few hours of driving time on it.Doing some math, the gadget officially gives you about a 600km range, so call it 400 miles. That's between six and eight hours driving time depending upon conditions (and also upon speed); given that EV proponents always assume low driving speeds, I'd probably call it closer to eight than to six.
The range is unlimited but so is your cost. Yes, I could drive 800 miles in a single day (it would take about 16 hours, but what else did I have planned) but that would cost me $150 in rental charges (plus the costs of the gas).
As was stated: Hotswapping batteries. Problem is, a lithium battery for a car is a very expensive thing. The practical side of solving this will not be clear-cut.
As was stated: Hotswapping batteries. Problem is, a lithium battery for a car is a very expensive thing. The practical side of solving this will not be clear-cut.
Yes. If you had infinite money, electric cars are a very good idea with no drawbacks. You simply phone the Tesla factory and tell them that you're driving from New York to San Francisco, and so when you get to Pittsburgh, you want to buy a new, fully-charged Roadster and trade in your existing one. Tell them to wait at milepost 54 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike with the appropriate paperwork -- if you're feeling nice, you could make it an actual service plaza like New Stanton.
After only a dozen or so new cars, you should be able to get to San Francisco. Then they can sell you the old cars back (in reverse order) on your drive home.
Well, that isn't the point of the idea of hotswapping batteries. It would be a way to get rid of the battery charging times. You go to a station, swap out your empty battery for a new one, then you go and the station people charge yours, ready to swap on.
However, batteries are big, heavy things that are installed deeply into the car structure as it stands. Removing them and replacing them isn't something you do without a car workshop. This doesn't mean, of course, that cars COULD NOT be designed for it.
However, if they are, said batteries also get stealable, which matters since they are also very expensive things.
If you had infinite money, electric cars are a very good idea with no drawbacks. You simply phone the Tesla factory and tell them that you're driving from New York to San Francisco, and so when you get to Pittsburgh, you want to buy a new, fully-charged Roadster and trade in your existing one. Tell them to wait at milepost 54 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike with the appropriate paperwork -- if you're feeling nice, you could make it an actual service plaza like New Stanton.
The problem with this post is that it costs more in tolls to drive across the PA Turnpike than a new Tesla is actually worth -- assuming you could avoid losing the smallish car down one of the infinitely-deep potholes littering the (generously) one-and-a-half lane width of the westbound pike.
As was stated: Hotswapping batteries. Problem is, a lithium battery for a car is a very expensive thing. The practical side of solving this will not be clear-cut.Yes. If you had infinite money, electric cars are a very good idea with no drawbacks. You simply phone the Tesla factory and tell them that you're driving from New York to San Francisco, and so when you get to Pittsburgh, you want to buy a new, fully-charged Roadster and trade in your existing one. Tell them to wait at milepost 54 of the Pennsylvania Turnpike with the appropriate paperwork -- if you're feeling nice, you could make it an actual service plaza like New Stanton.
After only a dozen or so new cars, you should be able to get to San Francisco. Then they can sell you the old cars back (in reverse order) on your drive home.
I'll have to remember to propose this idea the next time I'm in a modern roleplaying game with a ridiculously rich PC :)
The medieval counterpart was mostly like this. A messenger took a horse and rode it as hard as he could to the next place he could find one to swap it for, then on he went.
Well, that isn't the point of the idea of hotswapping batteries. It would be a way to get rid of the battery charging times.
I know. But as you point out, the batteries are a substantial fraction of the value of the car. It's easier and more practical to hotswap the entire car. And the only thing that keeps that from being a practical option is money.
Erm, battery swapping is already a possibility. Granted, this is a Tesla demonstration and it probably won't work on other EVs, especially because it might be a Tesla patent... hey, wait a second.
Model S battery swap
Erm, battery swapping is already a possibility.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as "possibility," for precisely the cost issue. The suggestion is that these stations will have fifty battery sets on-hand, at about $30,000 value each. That's about 15 million dollars in stock costs for one of these swap stations.
What's the "value" of a recharge -- as in, how much would you pay for a 90 second battery swap? I can fill a gasoline-based car for about $50, and it costs about $10 in electricity cost to fill a Tesla from scratch from a power line. More to the point, I can rent an actual car for $100 or so. If this rapid battery swap costs more than about $50, it's not really going to be a practical option.
But if you only charge $50/swap, and you swap (on average) 25 batteries per day, you're bringing in about $1250 per day or $400,000 per year. $400,000 per year on a $15,000,000 investment is 2.6% gross return on investment, $400,000 out of which you pay your lease costs, depreciation (which will be substantial), salaries, taxes, and so forth.
I don't think there's any way this is going to be any more economically viable than my rather tongue-in-cheek "have a new car waiting for me at Pittsburgh" model.
Here's a Forbes article that touches more on price.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we're still talking about things in the future (whether short term future or not depends on the subject, sudden break-throughs etc). You probably won't be able to keep filling that gas tank for $50 forever. That's also taking into account the massive subsidies the oil companies still get (oh, and places like Wall Street driving up the cost of gas through trade).
Another article/blog post (this one from Harvard Business Review) about the release of patents, put in a historical context.
A third article, this time about Musk, batteries and solar panels.
A third article, this time about Musk, batteries and solar panels.
Unless he designs cheap, reliable, efficient solar panels that don't use rare earth minerals, he's going to fail. The problem is that a lot of rare earths are controlled by China... which is the same nation producing those cheap solar panels. He pretty much has to reinvent solar technology from the ground up; even the Tesla vehicles, as innovative as they are, are not a complete reinvention of existing technology.