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That seems like a fantastic idea. This way, the car's internal battery can be smaller and lighter for day-to-day use (and therefore more efficient), and wheneve
by frosted-flakes 7y ago
That seems like a fantastic idea. This way, the car's internal battery can be smaller and lighter for day-to-day use (and therefore more efficient), and whenever longer range is needed you can just rent a fully-charged tow-a-battery, which you can swap out like propane tanks, or recharge yourself at home. These tow-a-batteries would work with any electric car with standard secure hook-ups.
Since these batteries would be rather expensive, I imagine that you would have to pay a refundable deposit to the tow-a-battery network (Shell, Esso, etc.) that covers the full cost of the tow-a-battery in order to rent one.
The biggest down-side is that a rear-end crash could be rather dangerous. I don't see a way around that without making the tow-a-battery a vehicle in itself.
- leetcrew 7y agoby the time you've added enough protection (ie, extra mass and drag) to the towed battery, it seems like you would be pretty deep into diminishing returns. a large amount of the extra energy would be spent on moving the trailer itself.
- ianai 7y agoNot really. Yes batteries add lots of weight. But electric motors have lots of torque and are known to climb hills easily. Like how Tesla’s forthcoming truck can tow up to 14000 pounds. I’m not doing the calculus, but I suspect the power characteristics of electric motors more than make up for a towable battery. Edit-here’s an article about a company doing this https://electrek.co/2020/02/19/french-startup-proposes-battery-trailers-as-ad-hoc-ev-range-extenders/ https://electrek.co/2020/02/19/french-startup-proposes-batte...
- leetcrew 7y agoenergy, not power. I'm sure the motors have enough torque to tow the battery, what I'm doubting is how efficiently that extra battery capacity gets converted to range. as an aside, the cybertruck is (probably) pretty bad at towing. see this video for an interesting argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4W-P5aCWJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4W-P5aCWJs
- renewiltord 7y agoVery slow video. Wish it were transcripted.
- ianai 7y agoIt also allows for faster retrofitting of old vehicles with new battery tech.