Hi, David here, EVDL lackey and moderator. If you have problems, don't reply to this message, it won't reach me. Send a message to the standard admin address for discussion lists, which here is
[email protected] You can get an alternate offlist address for me from the bottom of this webpage: http://www.evdl.org/help/ I think the person you're thinking of might be Alain St-Yves, who had a Chevrolet S10 conversion in Quebec, " Le Vehicule Vert," with a 5kW induction generator APU. Here is the truck in the EV Album: http://www.evalbum.com/122 Alain designed his own generator, powering it with an 11hp Honda engine (I also recall reading 13hp some time in the past). On the album page he says "Gas consumption, 3.5 litres/hour." It's hard to compute the true mpg from that, in part because I'm fairly sure he was also depleting the EV's battery. It was thus not a true hybrid but rather an EV with an APU that extended its EV range. He also used the genset to charge the EV while it was parked, so you'd have to figure that consumption into the equivalent mpg. The album page says weight 3400lb, but that may be with the genset removed (he says on that page "Generator now removed"). I think I recall him saying on the EVDL back in the early 2000s that it weighed 6000lb with the genset and the old lead batteris, though that seems awfully high. I'll troll my archive to see if I can find the message I read that in. Regrettably on the album page Alain says "2016 Update: This vehicule is not on the road anymore, all the EV parts have been removed and the truck was sent for recycling." But I expect he'd be willing to discuss it with you if you contact him. His email address is on the album page. That said ... here on the EVDL we've had a lot of discussions of using genset APUs (aux power units) in EVs over the years. Alain's is one of the successful ones. Not all have gone as well. I recall reports of burned-out gensets, chargers, even controllers. Apparently it's not as simple as just chucking a genset in the bed and plugging the charger into it. My take on APUs is that if you're driving an EV to clean up the air, putting a diesel genset, or even a gasoline genset, in the truck bed is not the way to go. Typical stationary gensets aren't held to anything near the emissions standard of mobile sources like cars and trucks. Your vehicle will be a gross polluter emitting several tens or even hundreds of times as much emissions of all kinds, especially unburned hydrocarbons, compared to driving an equivalent modern ICEV the same distance. Even if you don't care about air quality, there are other problems. An APU tends to use more fuel than you'd expect. The efficiency is just not very good compared to a modern computer-controlled ICE, and you lose yet more in the energy conversion. The most efficient APU I know of that could keep up with energy use on the highway (true hybrid) was the trailer Alan Cocconi built for his Honda Civic hatchback EV about 20 years ago. He used a motorcycle engine, Kawasaki I think. I don't know about its emissions, but IIRC it returned 32mpg in highway driving. A Civic VX hatchback of the same generation got real world 48-50mpg (EPA 52mpg) on the highway. The genset adds a lot of weight, as with Alain's 6000lb pickup. You can do better for mass placement with custom design, but putting it in the bed places the mass fairly high, where I would think it would affect handling. It's noisy. There's nothing quite like pulling up to a light and hearing and feeling that genset hammering along full-bore behind you. Honestly, you'll get better results overall by just keeping your ICEV for long trips. But if you're in it for the technical challenge, you'll certainly get plenty of that! David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
