Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Alot of reasons to prefer electric cars for the future

The APU feature
TB — (archived)

An electric car should have an auxiliary power unit, sized to provide very long range at normal cruise speeds, i.e. long highway trips.

The unit would eventually fall behind during heavy load driving, or a lot of acceleration, but it would extend the range a little bit even during city driving.

If you worked at it, you should be able to come up with a turbine drive unit that can burn a wide variety of fuels. Design it to adjust itself and you could tank it up with almost anything that burns.

Make it quiet enough and your APU could spin along nicely while you're parked somewhere, same as for an airplane, topping off your batteries.

Make the APU modular, and you can pull it out and shove in a fuel cell, or anything else that makes power. Solar panels on a car roof are cute, but not that effective. Although if you park for five hours in a sunny parking lot...

And of course, add the standard regenerative braking and all that.

Almost everyone looking for "range" in an electric car is looking at cross-country driving.

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