Yeah, that's supposed to be impossible. Either they're not moving and it's a staged shot (unlikely, since they're in the middle of traffic and there appears to be motion blur), or they've fiddled with the car to make it think the charging door is closed, or it's an edit.

I'm suspicious of the motion blur, personally, because the traffic looks too tight to be moving much, so I suspect an edit

Sus

Tesla won't you put it into drive if the cable is attached. Even if this is some hacked firmware, that tiny generator will give you like 4mi of range every hour. Definitely a meme.

It's also entirely possible someone had to transport that generator and decided to have some fun with it and fuck with people.

You're absolutely right. This is just a fake.

Last I heard it was a performance art piece to illicit this type of conversation about where the electricity comes from.

At the same time, I've wondered if it would be helpful for EVs on some long-distance road trips to tow/stow a generator for overnight and emergency charging. Charging stations are popping up more and more, but if you're saddled with an obsolete or under-served charging port type (e.g. Nissan Leaf), having a generator would be valuable insurance.

It's also how modern freight trains work minus the battery. The big diesel engines only produce the electricity for the electric motors.

so out in the utah salt flats they're always trying new and ridiculous looking things. There was a vehicle i remember seeing similar to this one:

the turbine was in the back and the wind provided all the motive force for the vehicle. and it worked! And the blades were not contained so it could chop the fuck out of something that got too close, absolute deathtrap. but powered by wind alone so if you had the right geography, like you live in wyoming or something you got a free ride. pop class 2 electric hub motor on that for windless days, fix the deathtrap part and you have an ideal vehicle if you ask me.

If you put solar panels on most of the surface of the car you can get up to like 40 miles per day, if Aptera makes it to production you could see that in real life. Though they do have a massive benefit of having a ridiculously efficient shape and layout

If the car is light enough, sails would work.

BMW did it long ago in the i3 with the range extender. Not the best attempt though. They made it tiny, but it still had a heavy battery (though obviously not a very big one, just heavy for a car of this size), so to get the weight down, they used carbon fiber, but it was supposed to be an economy car and now with carbon fiber it was expensive.

Idea itself is not bad though.

this is a great idea! love it. can we skip the small engine and just install a small fission reactor instead?

Was the gas engine like a trickle charge?

I've been asking forever why we aren't seeing gasoline electric vehicles. It's literally been standard practice for diesel locomotives for basically as long as diesels have been dominant, you hook a gigantic diesel generator (prime mover)to a pair of gigantic electric motors (traction motors), and when you want to slow the consist without consuming your precious air for more intense braking, you can just turn the motors into generators and dump the energy into giant resistor banks on the roof (dynamic braking) or into an battery powered engine behind your diesel electric engine

You get the power of electric motors, the mechanical simplicity of electric transmission, and the range and rapid refueling of an internal combustion engine. The disconnect between the prime mover and the traction motors means each can be tuned to their respective efficiency curves (especially if a bank of batteries/capacitors is included as a buffer) so you get more efficient idling, more efficient acceleration adds the options of connecting slugs (units with no prime mover nor control cab) or b-units (units with no cab)

George Miller wants to buy your design for a war rig

That's a good feature. I swear one day in a sleep deprived state I'm going to forget to take the gas nozzle out.

It can be plugged in with the generator on, so no issue. Not that this image isn't fake as fuck - the generator isn't secured, and it's connecting the AC generator plug directly to the EV port with a cable instead of using an EV charger. There are (were) some actual attempts at this: https://www.ecomotorsnews.com/en/news/electric-range-a-battery-trailer-reopens-the-long-distance-mobility-debate

Not sure why, but there seems to be a lot AI slop that's basically this, except they usually have these ridiculous industrial generators with plumes of coal smoke.

And ships.

Done. Sorry, didn't see the rules in the sidebar from my Lemmy client.

You don't need a trailer for that. It just attaches to the car. Doesn't weigh so much as to need a vehicle of it's own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

Here's a Dodge V10 with one.

And here's one from WWII so ppl don't think they were much bigger back then

No mames?? 😢

There were attempts, but suvh a system just doesn't work reliably. The pack has to be replaced by robots since it's under your car (has to be due to space constrains and more importantly weight), and the amount of moving parts, reliability and safety concerns were a constant issue.

For scooters it's no problem given the way smaller size and optimal position inside the chassis, but for cars this concept hardly works properly.

This is what diesel locomotives do.

I heard of hybrid cars working like that. I wonder why it never really became a thing.

For over a year there's been a pinned post requesting someone to take over the community with no one willing to mod. If you actually want to see the change then tell me and I will tranfer the community rights to you. Though I'd recommend to not act retroactively and make a post with new rules moving forward.

All PHEVs work like that.

Back to the old Chevy Volt.