siai47 said:Plus it looked a little silly with a couple of large orange power cables going out the passenger side rear window and going into what looked like the gas tank door to other drivers.
siai47 said:When I did this I was messing around with my first attempts at getting into the HV battery. . . . BTW--both packs could be charged in this configuration by the internal charger but there was no cell balancing available to the external pack so this wasn't a real solution for a long term range extender.
siai47 said:In summary, there are several ways to add external power to the car either though the existing pack or paralleling it. Each has it's own set of problems but it can be made to work.
PV1 said:Aerowhatt, I've done the same, and found that I average 23-25 amps for 60 MPH driving. What stopped me from doing a generator was the fact that I couldn't find an affordable generator capable of producing 350 volts, and a converter such as Enginer isn't powerful enough to maintain speed until a tank of fuel was used up. I started doing some research on an electric pusher trailer made up of 3 LEAF batteries (or a crap-load of laptop cells), but couldn't figure out a way to get a powered trailer with that much battery light enough. If it could've been pulled off, then I could do the route from Pittsburgh, PA to Normal, IL without any gasoline or diesel with 3 or 4 stops at quick chargers.
ed5000 said:I'm pretty sure you can parallel just about any auxillary battery pack to any main battery pack. The only thing that matters is you have to use the same pack voltage. It doesn't even have to be the same size (ie. battery amphours) or even battery chemsitry (at least within the lithium family).
PV1 said:You could use a Manzanita, Elcon, or Brusa charger to go from 240 VAC to 360 VDC. While most public charging is fossil-powered, it is cleaner than an ICE, but I agree, one less gas car is still a plus. A few gallons here or there in a PHEV setup beats a full-time ICE.
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