This really is an extreme and specific example, but risks like this are why most people want lots (lots) of range and why gas/diesel cars won't die out any time soon.
The sheer ease of mind that comes with having densely packed energy that can be replenished at a moment's notice practically anywhere should not be disregarded easily. Maybe battery tech can get there some day, but it's certainly not today.
I have a very old petrol car (>35y) with a terrible fuel-indicator. I bring a spare 5L tank with petrol under the backseat always.
An EV could achieve the same with a small portable powerbank, not?
My current tank can hold some 50+L; this gives my old T3 a range of ~430km¹. When we lived in Botswana ('83, other car) we had an extra 150L spare fuel-tank instead of back-seats. We could do some 1500km in this old 4wd on full tanks. Which was needed as gas-pumps were easily 300km apart and often out of gas.
An EV could achieve the same with the back-seats replaced by additional battery-packs, not? I'd presume this might be too heavy or not allowed due to regulations, but technically just adding ridiculous amounts of batteries would solve this. Like adding ridiculous tanks for gas would.
Sure, the amount of joules you can pack in a KG of fuel is far more than in a KG of batteries. But to me the solution then is easy: just add more KGs.
¹yup, the mileage is terrible, a VW T3 is basically an underpowered, 1500kg brick
> I bring a spare 5L tank with petrol under the backseat always.
Not too safe of an idea...
> An EV could achieve the same with a small portable powerbank, not?
Say that tank gets you 70km. You'd need 15 kilowatt-hours or 54 megajoules of battery, or about 56kg and about 25L of volume to do the same.
> An EV could achieve the same with the back-seats replaced by additional battery-packs, not? I'd presume this might be too heavy or not allowed due to regulations, but technically just adding ridiculous amounts of batteries would solve this.
Maybe, but it's also ridiculous amounts of money. Also, really increasing the mass of the vehicle is enough to hurt efficiency, so...
I would love to see some kind of standardized way of supplementing an electric car's battery. Most people don't need massive EV range all of the time, just when going on long trips. Being able to buy or rent an extra battery pack and throw it in the trunk, frunk, or back seats to add more range seems ideal for those cases.
I've thought it would be great if there were rentable battery trailers that had an extra full charge or two built in, plus maybe some extra storage.
uHaul could make a killing off of them for people who want to take their EV on a road trip. If you could get 600 miles off of a single combined full charge you would be in the range of reasonable American road trip distance, and you could make the choice to stop and eat and occupy two chargers to get another 480 miles or so out of a 30 minute stop.
I usually clock about 900-1100 miles a day when I'm doing a destination road trip, so I would still chafe at that limit, but it would beat the heck out of sub-300 mile limits between long breaks for me.
But of course uHaul can’t do this without the full cooperation of the electric vehicle manufacturers. As a first order approximation of course there is nothing tricky about suplementing the power of a running EV, but on a practical level I would expect the firmware to throw a hissy fit if it does not expects this.
Also, why a battery trailer? Why not a gas tank plus generator trailer?
Even with a smaller trailer, though, I'd expect a 33% or so range penalty-- it's just not too much of a win. You don't make it anywhere near twice as far.
Even so, assuming there were a nationwide network of them, you could pull in, swap trailers, and be on your way in 15 minutes.
Of course, this is in an ideal world where everything goes my way. I wonder if the penalty would be as high as 33%. Seems like it would be simple to make a maximally aerodynamic battery trailer since human comfort doesn't have to be considered. Then you're only adding the weight and drag of a few hundred lbs of trailer and battery.
I would think the penalty would be in the high single digits or at most in the very low double digits which could be offset by having 1.5x or 2x normal battery capacity in the trailer.
*Ninja edit, I decided to look this up. The Model Y's battery is 1700 lbs, so you are absolutely right that there would be a significant distance penalty adding that much weight to the vehicle plus the trailer weight and the battery armor as well if that isn't included in the weight.
Curb weight of the Model Y is also 4400 lbs, so having to tow a 2500 lb trailer would be a significant hassle.
Perhaps that could be offset by making the trailer smart and adding motors to it that the main brain could control through the power link. If it could push its own weight and it had a 1.5x battery, and if it also had regenerative braking, then it could get close to doubling the distance.
Then again, each trailer would cost right about the same as a full vehicle, and would require an entire factory to be spun up to make them, and it would be an incredibly valuable product and therefore ripe for theft.
Lots of negatives, not a lot of positives.
It would be better all in all to be able to hot swap the batteries then. With standardized batteries put onto an integrated sled system, a robot at the fuel pump could pull the discharged battery and put it on a battery tester/charger and insert a fresh charged battery in its place.
I guess that would be more like an oil change or system flush, but the advantages would be manifold. Batteries wouldn't be the weak spot in the system any longer. The likelihood of people keeping batteries until they degraded would be significantly reduced, problematic batteries could be identified and repaired or recycled before they erupted, and assuming that the system was in wide usage it could enable road trippers to stay on the road longer quicker and waste less daylight.
Plus, for manufacturers, fuel stations, and mechanics, it would be an opportunity to make more money off of vehicle owners while providing safer, longer lasting vehicles to customers.
It's probably still a post-scarcity pipe dream though.
> It would be better all in all to be able to hot swap the batteries then. With standardized batteries put onto an integrated sled system, a robot at the fuel pump could pull the discharged battery and put it on a battery tester/charger and insert a fresh charged battery in its place.
This has been discussed/proposed/Tesla said they were going to do this long ago.
The big downside is that no one wants to exchange their battery for someone else's. Pretty soon all the batteries end up in crappy shape.
The only way you could really do this is by having the swap stations own the batteries--- but this is so capital intensive that it's really a non-starter. Not to mention that it is a bit mechanically fraught.
The big upside is that we could use a lot more solar/daytime power for charging.
There's also the safety issue, since 1700 lbs of lithium is dangerous if mishandled.
If the glass pack batteries make it to market, with their 2x capacity boost and lack of dangerous chemicals, it might make more sense, but purportedly they also work better with quick charge and can handle more charge cycles, so it may be a moot point anyway.
A Jackery 1000 is already 20+ lbs and over $1000, and it wouldn't get an EV far. Spare power packs would have to be large and very expensive.
Better idea would be a mobile fast charging truck. Ironically that truck would have to be a diesel to make sure it had the range to support distant stranded vehicles, and not be insanely heavy and expensive itself.
That's just a UI trick, isn't it? Make 5% display as 0%, and add a solemn-looking toggle switch to select the reserve battery.
(According to a random source on the web, a Model Y battery weighs 1,770 pounds, so a perfectly efficient 5%-size physical battery would add another 88 pounds to the cargo.)
My car has a spare tank built in. I just carry a spare- spare jerry-can because the indicator is just too unreliable and the milage on the built-in spare tank rather meh.
You know, I don't think I've seen this idea before. I've seen discussion of "can we swap the whole battery pack at a station", "can we make the cells pourable", people carrying generators, etc., but I've not seen the idea of a removable part of power pack for limp-home situations. A modern equivalent of the Jerry can.
I got an i3 with a range extender and a 2 gallon gas tank. The gas tank range can't exceed the battery range and still be an EV. I use the battery almost all the time but knowing I can gas and go 80 miles is great. I drove 1,400 miles to Florida and back. It wasn't noticeably worse experience than an ICE.
It depends on the model year/battery size. That was a US only implementation and as you know there is a work around. The other European feature that should be available in the USA is the ability to set when the REX starts to kick in.
The USA requires the REX to kick in at 6% charge. The problem at that level is that the battery can't compensate during short high power drawls. There is a cheat code that enables the REX to kick in a 25% charge remaining. This seems to provide more on demand amperage but I'm not sure what is happening. Hills and wind have a larger effect on speed when off the REX. The REX is just a tiny motor that maintains the battery level but doesn't connect directly to the electric drive train.
Precisely. Gas cars have had their scandals and crises, I dont have to worry about the manufacturer juicing the fuel gauge for marketing purposes. I have been car-free for the past 12 years, but when it'll be time to move to the suburbs, I'll go with what works and is predictable.
Subaru did exactly this in their Outback 6 years ago and had to issue a recall. I got stranded in mine because the "low fuel" light came on when the tank was empty, not when there was a couple gallons left
If you drive your tank dry on the side of the road in a valley with no cell service, the fact that gas stations are plentiful won't help you and you're in exactly this same situation.
That's not true. You won't need to be towed, for one (I know that many tow services now are equipping their vehicle with a charger). No specialized equipment required, just someone with or willing to give you a ride to buy a $10 gas can and a gallon of gas, which should be enough.
The sheer ease of mind that comes with having densely packed energy that can be replenished at a moment's notice practically anywhere should not be disregarded easily. Maybe battery tech can get there some day, but it's certainly not today.