So what stopping you carrying diesel generator in back of

[vrooom]

your Electric car ?

I never seen people carrying a generator in back boot of thier Electric car in case of emergency?

[bullitinhead]

To do what with it?

Bullit

[vrooom]

To charge thier car with if there is no charge point nearby.

[McWigglebum4th]

As if they own an electric car they might be able to do this thing called "planning" where instead of driving around completely randomly they plan their journey and the return so they don't run out of electricity


You should try it

I find planning has cut my daily commute down from 600 plus miles to just 43 miles

[T16OLE]

McWigglebum4th said:

As if they own an electric car they might be able to do this thing called "planning" where instead of driving around completely randomly they plan their journey and the return so they don't run out of electricity


You should try it

I find planning has cut my daily commute down from 600 plus miles to just 43 miles

Have you ever run out if petrol?

[McWigglebum4th]

T16OLE said:

Have you ever run out if petrol?

Not since i used the whole "planning" thing


Ever driven in the highlands on a sunday?

[DonkeyApple]

vrooom said:

your Electric car ?

I never seen people carrying a generator in back boot of thier Electric car in case of emergency?

It would make more sense to build it into a little two wheel trailer with a storage compartment for the kind of luggage you need when going on the rarer long distance drive.

I don't see why it would be a logical way of extending your range.

I saw a MIA EV last night. Hadn't seen one before but I live in the UK hub for electric cars. Central driving position and looked a much better proposition over the GWiz and Nice. I looked it up and read that it had an 80 mile range but very, very low performance. So, like a few other EVs this one simply isn't safe for the motorway so a range extender would never be needed.

A while back I did ask on the BMW I3 thread why the range extender option wasn't removable as 90% of the time it is dead weight. It should be a 'travel pack' you can go to a BMW garage and rent for a week etc.

[The Wookie]

Probably because in the time it'd take you to charge it enough to get 10 miles to get to the nearest charging station to wait another 8 hours for it to charge, you might as well have called a tow truck and got it recovered back to your house.

Even if you have an AA membership. But only just.

[DonkeyApple]

McWigglebum4th said:

Not since i used the whole "planning" thing


Ever driven in the highlands on a sunday?

There's petrol in Thurso if you are there before 4pm and its a weekday.

[kambites]

vrooom said:

your Electric car ?

I never seen people carrying a generator in back boot of thier Electric car in case of emergency?

Manufacturers are starting to build them in, they're called "range extenders". Unfortunately they're rather heavy because you need rather a big generator to actually provide enough power for constant driving and if you have to wait for it to charge the car it doesn't serve a huge amount of purpose.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 15th October 08:22

[kambites]

DonkeyApple said:

It would make more sense to build it into a little two wheel trailer with a storage compartment for the kind of luggage you need when going on the rarer long distance drive.

I quite like this idea, but I wonder what proportion of the population are actually happy towing a trailer.

[Monty Python]

Just buy an Ampera instead.

[AdeTuono]

vrooom said:

your Electric car ?

I never seen people carrying a generator in back boot of thier Electric car in case of emergency?

Excellent idea! It could be petrol driven, and if you needed enough output for a quick charge, you could build in a 12 gallon tank so it'd run for hours.

Or you could just buy a conventional car.

[deltashad]

The Wookie said:

Even if you have an AA membership. But only just.

Do they provide the batteries?

[kambites]

deltashad said:

The Wookie said:

Even if you have an AA membership. But only just.

Do they provide the batteries?

It's an interesting point. As electric cars become more common, will AA vans start carrying high performance generators for burst charging (in the same way they carry cans of petrol at the moment)?

I suppose they could just tow you for a bit while you have your brakes on to recharge your batteries.

[98elise]

If you feel the need to do that, then you need a hybrid car, or one with a range extender engine (which is essentially the same thing as carrying a generator).

Most EV's have limited range at the moment, so as one poster said, you need to plan around that if that's the car you buy.

[Engineer1]

Or by the time Electric cars are really common there will be charge points at convient locations, the biggest issue will be the people who put the car on charge and get up to find a car with no charge either because they did't actually put it on charge or because the charging failed.

[kambites]

Engineer1 said:

Or by the time Electric cars are really common there will be charge points at convient locations, the biggest issue will be the people who put the car on charge and get up to find a car with no charge either because they did't actually put it on charge or because the charging failed.

When was the last time this happened to you when charging a battery powered device like a mobile phone? It certainly never has to me. I have, on the other hand, run out of fuel in a petrol powered car (the fuel gauge jammed at about 1/4 full and I didn't notice ).

[DonkeyApple]

deltashad said:

The Wookie said:

Even if you have an AA membership. But only just.

Do they provide the batteries?

And of course, for those with smaller EVs there would need to be AAA membership.

[redchina]

DonkeyApple said:

And of course, for those with smaller EVs there would need to be AAA membership.

Gold topped comment : )