The “range–extended” EV (BEVx) considered

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N952JL said:
Ingineer said:
It may be possible to "hang" the unit off the back if careful design was done, but the Leaf's rear suspension would probably not like it without some tweaking. So for our initial prototype, it will be a compact trailer.

-Phil
Phil,
have you every seen the paper on "Simulation of a Two-Stroke Free-Piston Engine for Electrical Power Generation". This might be smaller, lighter and more fuel eff than the C30.
see (https://inplortal.inl.gov/free%252520piston%252520device.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

A small generator to extend the range of the leaf for the few long range trips I make would be perfect. I could also use it as a stand by generator for the house when the power goes out.

My current 10kW PV system is gride tie and cannot be used for emergcy power.

Keep up the good work. I love your discussions on EVSEs. And when I receive my leaf I might (I only lease mine) be sending in my EVSE for the 120/240 upgrade. I've installed a PowerExpress from SPX with a 40amp breaker and 8 gage wire. That will be more than enough for the current leaf. Even if we go to 6.6kWh charger.

I wish there was a way to attach pictures but I have found that yet.

Tried sending this as a private message but couldn't.

Tried my link and it didn't work. I couldn't see the entire url with my search so try this one instead.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef800217k" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Joseph
 
Ingineer said:
The Leaf needs about 20kW to sustain highway use, so a 10kW would easily double your range. 20kW would be about perfect for long trips, and 30kW would allow you to charge and drive, so you could arrive with a full charge. This is what I'm building with a Capstone 30kW turbine. I can run it on CNG or Propane, and it's cleaner than almost any ICE.

-Phil

The turbine sounds very cool, but...

Cost?

Regulatory approvals required to bring it to the (after) market, and utilize on the road, with a licensed vehicle?

Not saying it can’t (or shouldn't) happen, but towing a trailer is a different concept than a 3 kWh to 10 kWh range extender, integrated into the EREV design. Of course, no one's built that yet, either.
 
edatoakrun said:
The turbine sounds very cool, but...

Cost?

Regulatory approvals required to bring it to the (after) market, and utilize on the road, with a licensed vehicle?

Not saying it can’t (or shouldn't) happen, but towing a trailer is a different concept than a 3 kWh to 10 kWh range extender, integrated into the EREV design. Of course, no one's built that yet, either.
The Capstone is CARB-Approved, and as far as I know you don't need "regulatory approval", just a DMV trailer license.

In addition, the trailer will be CHAdeMO capable, so it will be able to Quick-Charge an EV in any location.

pic


-Phil
 
edatoakrun said:
In addition, the trailer will be CHAdeMO capable, so it will be able to Quick-Charge an EV in any location...

-Phil

You had me at "CHAdeMO capable..."

hmm....30 kWh.

Have you calculated the capitalized cost per kWh, to run on natural gas in a (semi?) fixed location?
Not yet, feel free to if you like! All the needed data is on Capstone's site. Another option is to grid-connect the unit, and use some grid power and some Capstone power so that you can avoid the demand charges.

Right now my design will only be 30kW capable, not the full 50kW the Leaf is able to accept. Still, that should give a 80% charge in under 30 mins, and a full charge in under an hour.

-Phil
 
Ingineer said:
Right now my design will only be 30kW capable, not the full 50kW the Leaf is able to accept. Still, that should give a 80% charge in under 30 mins, and a full charge in under an hour.
Cool! Does the design also allow charging while driving?
 
eHelmholtz said:
Ingineer said:
Right now my design will only be 30kW capable, not the full 50kW the Leaf is able to accept. Still, that should give a 80% charge in under 30 mins, and a full charge in under an hour.
Cool! Does the design also allow charging while driving?
Yes, while connected to the Trailer, there is an "umbilical" cable that connects to the Leaf's battery that allows charging and/or motor operation while underway. Once parked, the CHAdeMO cable can be used to charge other cars.

Hopefully, I will be able to bring this unit to the December 3rd meeting at Google in Mountain View. Nissan's Engineering team will get a look! =)

-Phil
 
Ingineer said:
Yes, while connected to the Trailer, there is an "umbilical" cable that connects to the Leaf's battery that allows charging and/or motor operation will underway. Once parked, the CHAdeMO cable can be used to charge other cars. Hopefully, I will be able to bring this unit to the December 3rd meeting at Google in Mountain View. Nissan's Engineering team will get a look! =)
I want one! Seriously.
 
Ingineer said:
It may be possible to "hang" the unit off the back if careful design was done, but the Leaf's rear suspension would probably not like it without some tweaking. So for our initial prototype, it will be a compact trailer.
Like the RAV4 EV one ?
 
Here is the PDF for that Capstone C30, 400-480VAC output, looks pretty big.

30" x 60" x 70", #891 (ouch)

http://www.microturbine.com/_docs/datasheets/C30%20Liquid%20Fuel_331032E_lowres.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Here's a cut-away drawing:

pic



Here's it's Inverter and Control electronics. It can produce any single-phase or 3-phase frequency/voltage (even DC), from 0 to 500v, and can also connect directly to the grid for grid-sell operation.

pic


-Phil
 
Here is the one Phil is talking about I believe. About 250 pounds with the inverter... And they are right down the street from me.

http://www.microturbine.com/_docs/CAP1100_Drive%20Solution_Range%20Extender_LR.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


mitch672 said:
Here is the PDF for that Capstone C30, 400-480VAC output, looks pretty big.
30" x 60" x 70", #891 (ouch)
http://www.microturbine.com/_docs/datasheets/C30%20Liquid%20Fuel_331032E_lowres.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
From the Plug-In America Nov 11 Newsletter:
I especially enjoyed getting to meet new friends in the EV movement, as well as seeing many of our longtime supporters. The award for best effort driving electric to the party has to go to Stephen Johnsen who drove his Chevy S10 pickup all the way from Seattle pulling a homebuilt range-extending trailer filled with Lithium batteries.

From the S-10EV list:

Hi fellow S-10E owners, I've been sort of quiet on the list lately busy with many things. One of them relates to the S-10E though and I figured you all would like to hear about the epic journey my two friends and I are making right now from Seattle to Southern California and back with my S-10E and without using a drop of gasoline!

Last Thursday my friends Ron and Chad and I hooked what we call the Range Trailer up to a 1997 GM S-10E. The Range Trailer is a mobile power source containing approximately 70 kWh of lithium iron phosphate batteries. We designed the trailer to be light and efficient and built it from the ground up using aerospace construction materials such as aluminum and composite honeycomb board. It is intended that any electric vehicle with a tow hitch and our appropriate interface controls can make use of the Range Trailer. The trailer's battery pack spends most of its time between 350 and 400 volts DC. This power is then regulated using a specially modified battery charger from Manzanita Micro and we have controls in the cab. The trailer is able to provide about 30 kW of power to our S-10E towing vehicle which is enough to keep the towing vehicle's own battery pack full under nearly all driving circumstances. This means that unless your destination is at the top of a very extreme mountain pass or the trailer's battery is depleted, you will arrive at your destination with a full charge in the tow vehicle so you can then leave the trailer charging while you go and drive around town.

Using the Range Trailer has been an exhilarating and exciting experience with little challenges such as overcoming the S-10E's “Unintended Charging Without Paddle Connected” DTC! :)

Anyway, last Thursday we left Seattle at 4:00pm and arrived in Yreka, California on Friday evening. We stopped a few times to charge at over
70 amps from public Tesla Charging stations using an adapter that I made. One of the highlights of the trip was getting into Woodland California and pulling up to a charging area at a shopping mall where we used every electron we could get. Knowing that there was a Small Paddle Inductive charger at the location, we had purposely turned off the assistance from the trailer to deplete the S-10's own on-board pack so then we placed the truck on the SPI when we arrived. We then used my Tesla adapter to charge the Range Trailer from the 70A Tesla station and we used my J1772 adapter and extra Manzanita Micro PFC-40 charger run through a home-made isolation box cooled by a spare Comair Rotron “Tarzan” 240Volt fans from an old Gen 1 Magnecharge unit. With this we were able to pull 42A from the J1772 Clipper Creek CS40 going into the PFC-40 which then had it's DC output paralleled with the Range Trailer's 80A on-board charger. Adding all the chargers up allowed us to charge at the public level 2 stations in record time while pulling around 30,000 watts of power! Many thanks to Tom Dowling for all his work on these Woodland stations and others throughout California.

You can follow our journey by finding us on Facebook (search for The Range Trailer), on Twitter (search for @RangeTrailer) or any of you can see a live GPS update from my friend Chad's I-phone app which plots our location every 10 minutes. For that simply go to:
http://www.followmee.com

Then, the login is: roadtrip
The password is: roadtrip1234

Once you are in, go to the “Map” screen and then click on “Chademo Ipad” and you should be taken to a google map view of our current location. There is also a “last 24 hours” option so that you can see the path that we've been on.

We left Salinas, California early in the morning on Tuesday November 15, headed North back to Washington State. We went through San Francisco and stopped again in Woodland and then made just one more stop at an RV park in Redding, CA where the friendly lady at the front desk let us pull from 3 RV stalls (with 50A outlets) and wouldn't even accept payment for the electricity. From Redding, we made the most grueling single leg of the trip up I-5 around Mt. Shasta then over the Siskiyous and up and down over the many passes around Grants Pass in Oregon. We battled rain and slick roads where we saw a full size Ford pickup completely slide across the road in front of us and into the median. The trusty S-10E and Range Trailer with its trailer brakes stayed firmly planted and after a brutal 209 miles without a charge we pulled into Canyonville, Oregon to grab some dinner and watts.

You can check out the Range Trailer facebook page for more photos of it. Oh, and the truck has been performing absolutely wonderfully except that we lost the PSCM on the way down so steering is a pain at lower speeds.

Best Regards,

Stephen Johnsen
Vice President Seattle Electric Vehicle Association Founder HPEV LLC P.O. Box 302 Maple Valley, WA 98038
253-234-HPEV(4738)
High Performance EV
Design::Consulting::Innovation::Education
 
Ingineer said:
Here is a picture of Stephen's Range trailer:

pic


I was able to hook him up with 50 amps of charging at the Plug in America gala. Pretty cool!

-Phil

Was wondering how large their trailer is. Thanks for the picture.
I would hope they have some kind of low jack or other security measures as well as insurance on the replacement cost.
This is some 70 kWH of serious energy on wheels about 3 times that of a Leafs.

Danny
 
N952JL said:
I love the BEV, but the leaf needs to have 4x the range at the same price to become main stream.
Nah, double the range at $10K lower price would do it in my opinion, especially as fuel prices rise and people care more about getting to and from work and the store than the rarely taken road trip.
 
TomT said:
Here is the one Phil is talking about I believe. About 250 pounds with the inverter... And they are right down the street from me.

http://www.microturbine.com/_docs/CAP1100_Drive%20Solution_Range%20Extender_LR.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


mitch672 said:
Here is the PDF for that Capstone C30, 400-480VAC output, looks pretty big.
30" x 60" x 70", #891 (ouch)
http://www.microturbine.com/_docs/datasheets/C30%20Liquid%20Fuel_331032E_lowres.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ok, thats a lot smaller and lighter... thankfully. yes, 200 + 50 (inverter) pounds is not too bad, add in a #100 propane tank, and I think you have something there.

So, Phil, is the plan to run that at 480V, 3 phase, and connect it to the new low cost Nissan chademo charger, essentialy? or one designed by you perhaps...
 
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