Or you could, you know, get the gas gauge fixed or stop trying to micro-optimize the last 25% of the grocery gas discount. Either of those would cost 50-300 times less than $19K...
What a world we live in that someone so careless has so much money to throw at his problem.
An alternative would be an SMR (and possibly a bank of caps) but I don't think any of the currently working or even close to working designs would fit on a regular trailer (the KLT-40S seems to be the lightest working SMR at 80t with water, the rest is 150~1500t).
A 10 minute charge and you'd have topped up the stranded vehicle with 16kWh, enough for 50 miles or so travel to get home or to the nearest fast charger. And you'd still have plenty left in the pack in the unlikely event of further callouts.
[^] (Modern EV packs already have significantly higher energy density than the old 85kWh Model S, by the way).
A DC-DC transfer would enable fast charging rates with relatively compact and lightweight equipment. A diesel generator that can output, say, 100kW continuously is pretty big and hefty!
Also, by nature, most "ran out of charge" incidents will happen near a charger (or near home, etc) because the driver thought they could make it. It's not likely that someone would drive off into some really remote area with no idea of where they would charge the car.
look at smartphone and laptop batteries now compared to 10 years ago. battery swapping used to be a thing when companies were cool with right to repair and independent shops fixing products; not so much now. look up louis rossmann and the way apple dealt with him (spoiler sending customs to take everything under the guise of using fakes)
He's developed carbon only batteries/supercaps that beat Lithium ion batteries by something like double the capacity. Some of what he is working on can be overcharged at high voltage and the cell comes to capacity in a very short amount of time.
The Tesla Model S 100kwh battery is about 1300 lbs, and it's a structural member of the car, so removing it is not a quick operation. That's about 25-30% of the weight of the car, just for the battery. The battery essentially is the floor pan.
Even an 100 mile battery would still weigh something like 400lbs (plus the weight of the support brackets/frame), and it's hard to put that somewhere in the car where it can easily be swapped, and also not make the car handle poorly.
Inventory management would be a nightmare though, considering the range of physical dimensions, weight, battery specifications etc. Often none of these things are standard even across a single model range let alone the entire industry. When the batteries are often over 1000lbs and large, it’s difficult to carry a range of spares. I’d imagine it also might be a pretty tough job even in the easiest cases for a single roadside mechanic to perform, given the sizes and weights involved.
There’s also the thorny issue of battery health - what if the replacement has more or less charge cycles than the existing battery? This can materially affect the resale value of a vehicle. At least cellphone batteries were tiny and cheap.
You can push it to recharge though. :D
Being stranded was a result of the car having a non-working fuel gauge. The $19k fix was buying a Nissan Altima, not the Model 3. I have no idea why TFA opted to open with this, but the quote and the corresponding introductory paragraph really have no relation to Tesla or the model 3 or the rest of the post.
And it is not worth trying to fix it, as is the case for most electrical problems a Chevy Venture tends to have.
(Ideally one that seals properly)
But the real reason is that you are carrying enough energy to carry you, 4 of your friends, and 3500# of automobile 35 miles away in a container not designed to avoid spillage, venting vapors, nor survive a collision. (That "aside from the bad smell" is dangerous, both to mammals and from an explosion risk perspective.)
Rotating the gas is easy.
Snark aside, if people have a hard time remembering to refuel then there should be some technology to remind them. Something as simple as a phone reminder would do the trick.
2) Research your fuel tank capacity (Also a google-able event)
2) Fill your tank completely
3) Reset your tripometer; drive until it nears the magic empty number: (Fuel Tank Capacity)x(Adjusted MPG). When it's within 10% of that number, you should consider adding more gas. If it's even closer to that number; you should really considering adding more gas.
4) Reset the tripometer every time you fill up
(You're also leaving the path of "saving money" vs fixing the gauge or just using 1/2-3/4 of the factory tank using ded reckoning by trip odometer. Typical fuel cell at Summit Racing is over $200 plus plumbing parts needed plus installation labor.)
https://www.livescience.com/58117-does-gasoline-go-bad.html
Ask anyone who has ever left untreated gas in their lawn mower over winter. It takes a drain and some work to get the mower started in the summer. Throw in 1oz of fuel stabilizer, and all is well.
(So the obvious answer is to put fuel stabilizer if you are going to store gas for > 6 months. It only costs a few cents per gallon)
They do have gas problem every year with their snow blower, it's systematic, they just don't put enough care about it.
Is there anything about the generator that could have helped? Is there's fuel stabilized that can last a decade? We were pretty happy to see it start such "easily" and be able to plug our essential stuff on it without having to go buy gas.
If it's a portable generator, either put 100LL in it or (even better) run it entirely dry (to shut down) when done using it.
To your stable fuel question, for a permanently installed unit in a residence, I think it's incredibly hard to beat natural gas as a fuel supply for it.
It's pretty common for home generators to be natural gas. If gasoline, maybe keep the gas outside of it and rotate it every 3 months. I.e. have a 10 gallon can of it you buy in Jan. In april if you haven't used it yet, use it to fill up your car, and buy a new 10 gallons in a can. That way your gas is at most 3 months old, at the cost of having to lug around a can 4x a year. You could likely reduce to a 6 month rotation and not have much difference either.
It's not hard to own a car without a gas guage.