Why can an electric car not be equipped with an alternator/generator to provide electricity just as a gasoline vehicle? Have pondered this question for a while now and never have heard it even discussed. Just seems that powers to be want to sell us electricity when it is generated by the vehicle….car, lawn mower, etc…. anything that is “running” and has a power source to generate electricity will run for years. A automobile battery last for years and is recharged as vehicle is running….what are we missing here?

Great idea, if they dropped a little V6 powered generator in a electric car it'd probably charge pretty quick.

There's plenty of room in that frunk space they have.

Any transfer of energy is a loss. That's the law.

Been done on a few EV’s already, including the BMW I3. BMW calls it a “range extender”. The I3 is all electric, and could be optioned with a small gas engine to charge the betteries while driving.

You would still have room for a case of beer and a shotgun.

What you describe is called a hybrid. Hundreds of thousands of them on the road already. A gas engine, a generator, a battery, and electric motors. There are different ways to do it, but those are the main components.

Our Toyota Highlander Hybrid is a mid-size SUV that goes 300+ miles on eight gallons. NObody does hybrids as well as Toyota.

Duh

The opportunity for the ability to suck $$$s out of the shutdown of the fossil fuel industry and the start-up of the 'Alternative' Energy Industry..........

And the beauty is they get to suck out of BOTH industries for a long while since todays EVs are still powered by the same fossil fuels...... and until something better comes along, will be so for quite a while...

To the first point you make Internal Combustion/Electric Power has been around for well over a Century.........boats, surface and submersible, trains, factories............. batteries for submersibles....

You'd think coasting, and braking would charge the battery.

They do to some extent but it's not nearly enough to completely charge the batteries. They need some form of external power to completely recharge. Regenerative braking is just a booster.

When was the last time you coasted for hours?

Wow, a perpetual motion machine, and they said it couldn’t be done!

Way back, I was told a traveling salesman would take his time getting up to speed, and coast to the slower speeds. Easy, on fuel, and brakes.

I might be misinterpreting your question, but are you asking why there isn't an alternator included which can run off the lithium battery? Sorta like a perpetual motion type deal where the battery could turn another shaft other than the axles which would have an alternator attached to it and constantly continue charging battery by using same battery's power.

I am not an electrical engineer by any means but have fixed enough vehicles in my time to think that the power it takes to turn this type of ac alternator may cancel out any benefit in charge to the same battery. I may be wrong in this assumption but would figure this is the reason you don't see this type of setup on any electric vehicles as of now. Perhaps this may change with future innovations.

Good thought though.

-Ken

IIRC, there is/was a world wide contest for a perpetual motion machine. Prize is 100K or maybe 1M. Anyway, some fellow developed an generator that would produce more power than was needed to run the electric motor, that turned the generator. Hooked a light to it and a meter to show it worked, but it needed a battery to run the electric motor. He didn't get the money, because even tho the battery was being constantly charged, it would eventually fail, thus stopping the movement of the mechanism.

Thermodynamics.

Cold fusion is next, get ready for free energy..

More like the batteries in a hybrid that are recharged by braking aren't big enough to power the drive train in an EV by themselves and aren't meant to power the drive train without an engine to do most of the work.

Beanie propeller hat type thingy on the roof of the car, wind generated charger... bingo...

Kent

IF the car moves, unless you have pushed it, the engine has done ALL the work..... with energy provided from an external source!

So you mean when you convert coal energy to electricity you lose?
Then when you transform it to transmission voltage you lose?
Then when you transform it down again you lose?
Then when you transform it to DC you lose?
Then when you convert it into chemical energy for storage in a battery you losy?
Then when you convert it back to DC voltage you lose?
Then when you convert it to kinetic energy you lose?

Sounds like a losing proposition.

Exactly.

And we should be going Hybrid, not EV.

Hmmm....?
Have you considered a diesel/electric locomotive?

A diesel locomotive has a humongous diesel motor.
The motor runs a 600V DC generator. Each drive wheel has it's own 600V DC motor.

The throttle on a locomotive controls the diesel. More power to the diesel equals more energy produced by the generator to apply to the drive wheel motors.

Yeppers!
An engine/generator vehicle has been in all our lives since back in the 1930's. Everything that moved/moves by rail that we use every day.

Generally the loss is in the form of heat.

Yep!

I've said that for a while now, Tarquin. There are still needs for the pure power of gas/diesel vehicles, and likely will be for a very long time. But for simple people movers, hybrid is the way to go.

I believe what is being asked is, a automotive generator takes approximately 3 to 5 hp to run and create 100 to 150 Ah, while the drive motor creates more hp than is actually necessary to power the car in most cases. So why isn't a small generator included to partially replace the battery charge? While I haven't studied the builds on electric cars. I believe they do through circuitry charge while in downhill or freewheeling mode. It's a good question...

Phil

Yes. As 45 said much is lost as heat.
But consider friction.
In the steam passageway,
In the turbines
In the motor.


Ever stand near high voltage lines and hear that buzz?
That's sound, it takes energy to create sound.
Turn off the electric you won't hear it. That's lost energy.

I'm sitting here by our router, if I put a hand over it, it's quite warm.
Even when no one is using the internet.
That heat, is wasted energy. Electric being consumed that is not
actually giving us internet.

My machine at work has a 10 and a 30hp electric motor on it to make it work. Both of those motors have a 3/to motor mounted on them
running a fan to cool them. They actually heat the room in the winter.
That's all energy loss.



An incandescent lamp is so inefficient because of the heat they
produce. You are using electric to make light, a huge amount of it
makes heat instead. Any light producer is easily tested for efficiency
by feel.


That kinda hold true for any device thats not used to produce heat.


Look into the efficiencies of I/C engines.
It's disgusting. But consider how much heat they make.
Then consider the energy wasted carrying cooling components,
how much it takes to pump coolant, run the fan...

On a semi, it takes 20-30hp just to run the fan. On the old trucks
you could feel the fan kick on during a hard pull, occasionally., it would
cause you to downshift. Again, energy wasted to offset energy wasted.

And the answer, greyghost, is that we've already been doing that now for decades. They're called hybrids. You have to be a troglodyte to have never heard of them.

A pure electric vehicle - meaning nothing but a motor and a battery - will never be a good solution until we design them to use replaceable and rechargeable batteries like an electric drill. You pull into a service station and a robot removes your depleted battery, inserts a fully charged one, and away you go again. The old battery goes into a charging bank to eventually be put into some other vehicle.

In the meantime, THE best answer for simple people movers is the hybrid.

When inertia and gravity converts the motor into a generator instead of a motor,, No...

Phil

The advantage I see on a engine/generator is the ability to run the engine at a constant rpm so it can be tuned for that speed.
A diesel electric locomotive uses the generator /motor in part as it is not practical to make clutch and transmission for that amount of torque and have it portable.

The rage now is the impossible perpetual motion. There are a bunch of videos on youtube and other websites about how to build a self powering generator. They say that once it's started from an outside power source, it will feed itself indefinitely. They make these fakery videos to get people to click on them because that's how they make their money. Here's one that attempts to refute that and he shows how some of the fakery is done. It would help if he'd do more showing and less talking but he gets there slowly.