We need more of these 'drop in' style conversion kits. If only to keep classic cars on the road.
I can't see BigCar Co. being happy though, they are having enough trouble selling new cars as it is, and even worse luck trying to sell [overly expensive] new EV cars, without people converting their favorite small cars to electric.
Hell, some places(UK!) still sell leaded(!!!) petrol specifically for use in classic unmodified vehicles. It never got completely banned because the impact of someone taking a 100 year old carriage for a drive and burning couple litres of leaded petrol is absolutely not worth worrying about. Last I checked there were still 3 companies in UK authorized to sell it.
[1] https://www.holtsauto.com/redex/products/lead-replacement-mu...
Edit: Yep, I had to look it up - certain metals used in old engines make them incompatible with common additives. You can however, buy an additive( Tetraboost (Tetra-ethyl lead)) that contains lead, effectively making any unleaded petrol equivalent to leaded petrol:
There seems to be a total of 13 garages in the UK authorized to continue stocking actual, real leaded petrol.
It's one thing pleasure-driving and keeping a can of fuel around to keep it going. Needing to spend 20% of your fuel on getting fuel - and then being forced to queue either inside the shop to pay, or outside on the forecourt - is what kills a vehicle for commuting.
Electric loads are like 10% of a car’s use, and here I am burning gas extremely inefficiently to kill my alternator to generate it.
And more stuff is becoming electric instead of belt drive (e.g. cooling pumps and power steering pump).
If my average trip is 50 miles, being able to shunt all electric loads to a supplemental li-ion battery does just as much good as having a hybrid plug-in drivetrain that can do 5 miles engine-off.
Not quite, but I think we’re missing a huge opportunity to turn entire fleets into 5%-10% electrics.
Would be cool if my alternator could be used for some regen, (new automatics are doing engine-braking!) but that’s probably outside of the scope of a drop-in kit.
Car alternator output is on the order of 1 to 2kW. A battery [1] which can do ~1kWh - 100A at 12V - is about $300 and weighs 12kg. It's also big - 40x20x25cm - stick it in your boot and you'll notice the space reduction.
That would just do 1 hour, at the lowest level of alternator output. If you need more power or more range, double it; more of both, double it again.
The next question to ask is do you trust keeping a $300 Chinese battery in your car without it blowing up? You probably want a reseller who'll stand behind their products, ensure the supply chain maintains quality, has sufficient safeguards, etc. The price is going to go up even more.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1KWH-Deep-Cycle-LiFeP...
This wouldn’t physically replace the alternator, just let it free-spin until drained.
The economics are already confirmed (or not?) by the presence of plug-in electrics, it’s just that they go engine-off for some miles, while this idea goes engine 90% for 10x the distance. It’s perhaps even more efficient to make electric loads fully electric instead of building an electric drive-train onto an ICE one.
https://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/home.detai...