I think another main concern is that when you go full-electric, you can design the car for it. If you have to deal with ICE and gasoline/fuel/exhaust, there are design considerations, safety factors, etc, that would impact the "ideal" design for a full-electric vehicle. When you go full-EV, there's a fair bit of freedom with the design you can take, and it's almost like a clean slate. A few cars have done that and I think really benefit from it. Also, with the prevalence of charging stations, and the basic demographic of an EV buyer, I'm not sure what you'd gain with such a generator setup... 10 minutes at a charging station would give you more power than an hour via any reasonable generator.
The future of full ev cars is essentially whatever you want to plop onto a pair of enormous, elaborate hoverboards. The Chinese market has about 300 versions of this. Hybrids also have to deal with the massive dual weight of fuel/engine and batteries. You have to lean really heavily into one and not the other.
I am not an engineer, nor do I play one on tv, but the amount of energy required to move a car down the road is more than a small generator can provide. They've been trying this for a LOOOOONG time. It could extend the range some, but you're still going to have to recharge periodically. Not to sound like more of a smartass than I normally do, but if it was that easy, they would already be doing it.
Just to throw some numbers at this your basic level 2 charger outputs roughly between 5 to 20 kW but most commonly output around 7kW. On a level 2 charger it usually takes 8-10 hours to charge your car. Put another way a L2 charger at a 7kW output can charge your battery and add range at a rate somewhere around 22-25 miles per hour. Your Level 3 charging (DC Fast chargers) operate in the 20kW up to 350kW range with 50kW being pretty common. At level 3 rates you can generally charge an EV from 0-80% in 20-40 minutes. At these rates you are adding range at roughly 7 times as fast or in the range of 155-175 miles per hour. for reference here is a 50 kW trailer mounted generator.
Trains and many ships are diesel-electric. The common theme to both is their power settings don't change all that much compared to a car/truck on a road. My understanding is they're designed to be most efficient at specific power settings and a car rarely stays at one specific power setting for very long. It's a similar issue with turbine engines, which take longer to spool up than an ICE engine and are typically designed to be most efficient at specific power bands. That along with significantly higher exhaust temperatures is why you rarely see turbines used outside of aviation and maritime uses. Other than the M-1 Abrams tank I can't think of any land vehicles that use a turbine engine.
I appreciate the replies, I didn't realize the power requirements were so high, but then I guess that's why it takes so long to charge. Obviously my auto class in high school that I used to go out to lunch did not prepare me for auto design. I guess I'll stick to cattle equipment like I'm used to. I do appreciate you all taking the time to help me understand it though, thanks!!
Went to change the belts on my 02 Civic. The power steering pump is mounted right on top of the alternator, you can to take the pump and the reservoir off(dont have to drain it, just fold the hoses and pump out of the way) to get to the alternator. And Honda in their infinite wisdom put the adjuster all the way under the alternator with a wing nut instead of a nut at the end of the adjustment screw. There is a nut behind the wing nut but it is part of the wingnut and really under the alternator. So i bought a set of really cheap wrenches(could of bought just the one 12mm) and made an offset wrench, still took a few hours of a quarter turn at a time because it was very stiff from probably never moving in the 20 years it has been around.
Those Japs just love their manually adjusted belts. They kept using them well into the '00s, whereas Detroit went to automatic tensioners in the '80s. Anyway, I don't think that wingnut is from the factory; I have a feeling that someone replaced the original tension bolt/ but with that after the original broke or stripped (both common occurrences for that style of tensioner.).
I thought so too, but according to the youtube video i found it says it is factory 1:38 for the ps pump wing nut 3:14 for the alternator wing nut
We stopped a little restaurant in the delta this weekend and saw this absolute unit of a boat. That's about a quarter mil hanging off the transom. (Included a stock photo so you can get an idea how big this fucker was)
I bought my 2021 Jeep Cherokee Altitude 4x4 new about 20 months ago. I drive it every day and have about 45k miles on it. It has the Auto Start/Stop feature, that I think is intended to save fuel and reduce emissions. (I'm not sure how much of that it actually does.) But, it shuts off at traffic lights or fast food drive-thrus, and then restarts when you the brake is released. The default (resets each time the car starts) is for this to be active, but there is a switch to deactivate it. Last Summer and this one, I typically deactivate it when I get in, because I like for the A/C to run cold all the time. When the engine shuts off, it doesn't cool as well. Anyway . . . On the dash menu options, I can scroll to the Start/Stop info screen. If it's active, but not engaged the message will say: Start/Stop Not Ready Cabin Heating / Cooling if I've just started and the temperature hasn't regulated yet or Start/Stop Not Ready Steering Wheel Turned or Start/Stop Not Ready Drive Seatbelt Unbuckled and so on. There are several things that will keep it from working. I usually keep the dash info on gas mileage or tire pressures, and I don't usually check the S/S screen. But, the other day I notice the S/S wasn't working, even though I hadn't pressed the button to deactivate it. So, the message I'm getting is Start/Stop Not Ready Battery Charging This is the factory battery, only 20 months old. It should last 3-5 years. And, I've never let it sit for more than a day without starting. Maybe an odd 3-4 days here and there if I was traveling. I did a little research, and the internet tells me the battery is going bad. It's at 13.7 volts. The internet also tells me that I can put a trickle charger on to get it back. I don't understand that. Shouldn't the alternator be doing what a trickle charger would do?
I'd take it in and have the system checked... they'll be able to quickly tell you if it's a battery, voltage regulator, alternator, etc. It could also be a bad battery lead, a bad ground, etc.
I swear I've seen more dead batteries on cars at the shop in the last year than the previous 4 years combined. Not sure if it's because of the electrical load cars draw these days or if the batteries are just generally shittier than they use to be.
Why would I go to a dealer and pay $100 when I get free and equally reliable (actually, probably more reliable) info here? Half kidding, but I'm trying to get as much info as I can. The Jeep forums I've read are all over the place, but this has happened to others. Several folks have had problems with the dealer misdiagnosing the issue, and having to make multiple trips. (And theirs was warranty work, and mine won't be.) Someone said that alternators don't charge batteries the way they used to. And, other people that had the problem fixed it by installing a new battery. I just thought it was weird for a battery to start going bad after that short of a time . . . but, there haven't been any problems starting. I've never had a vehicle that needed the full charge for a S/S command, and don't have cold winters where it's a problem. So, maybe a battery that's bad after 4 years has been going bad at a slow rate, but still enough juice to crank.
Around here, if you take it into NAPA or Canadian Tire, they'll put a tester on it for free and tell you what's wrong... that's what I meant. Not take it into the dealer.