I've been cranking out the mpg numbers for a generator powered electric geo metro (Since I noticed it had a princely effective drag area number of 6.08 ft^2 on wikipedia), and my estimations came out to about 30 mpg. Considering the original car gets about 42mpg, that idea didn't look too promising, lol.
However, I did run the numbers for a diesel generator and got something like 70mpg. Woah!
Diesel seems to be where it's at for fuel efficiency! (Diesel gets 20% more energy per gallon, and diesel engines seem to be something like 70-100% more efficient than gasoline engines for some reason. Possibly direct injection technology?)
So, realizing that simply running an electric car on a gas generator didn't exactly improve fuel efficiency, I thought that I'd actually have to redesign the car in order to improve fuel efficiency.
Well, there's the new 84mpg Elio coming out. Looks like it has half the frontal area and a pretty slick drag coefficient from the looks of it, so it seems like the perfect vehicle to use as a starting point. I figure if I used a high efficiency hub motor (90+% efficiency), and then ran a 30% efficient diesel generator that powered the motor (I'd probably build the generator myself since the cheapest 5000w diesel generators I could find cost about $1500 more than than the cost of a namebrand ~6000watt/7.5hp diesel motor, lol), I could probably get somewhere between 200-300 mpg at speeds of 55mph since the wh/mi would be around 50wh/mi. (One could drive faster if desired, but one would get noticeably decreased fuel economy since energy expenditure, and thus fuel consumption, is roughly square to velocity.)
So, what do you guys think? Got any ways to improve the mpgs? I'm trying to squeeze the best possible MPGs I can out of a highway vehicle because the idea of going on a cross-country roadtrip on $150 of gas sounds incredibly appealing. Or, if one were to primarily use batteries, which wouldn't cost /that/ much (Relatively speaking), one could do it on (10000mi*50wh/mi=500kwh*($.1/kwh)=$50) $50 of electricity. With the gas bill as of today being somewhere north of $1000 for such a trip, and how staycations are reaching an all-time high, lol, I'd say there's room for such a vehicle.
Here's the elio car:
However, I did run the numbers for a diesel generator and got something like 70mpg. Woah!
Diesel seems to be where it's at for fuel efficiency! (Diesel gets 20% more energy per gallon, and diesel engines seem to be something like 70-100% more efficient than gasoline engines for some reason. Possibly direct injection technology?)
So, realizing that simply running an electric car on a gas generator didn't exactly improve fuel efficiency, I thought that I'd actually have to redesign the car in order to improve fuel efficiency.
Well, there's the new 84mpg Elio coming out. Looks like it has half the frontal area and a pretty slick drag coefficient from the looks of it, so it seems like the perfect vehicle to use as a starting point. I figure if I used a high efficiency hub motor (90+% efficiency), and then ran a 30% efficient diesel generator that powered the motor (I'd probably build the generator myself since the cheapest 5000w diesel generators I could find cost about $1500 more than than the cost of a namebrand ~6000watt/7.5hp diesel motor, lol), I could probably get somewhere between 200-300 mpg at speeds of 55mph since the wh/mi would be around 50wh/mi. (One could drive faster if desired, but one would get noticeably decreased fuel economy since energy expenditure, and thus fuel consumption, is roughly square to velocity.)
So, what do you guys think? Got any ways to improve the mpgs? I'm trying to squeeze the best possible MPGs I can out of a highway vehicle because the idea of going on a cross-country roadtrip on $150 of gas sounds incredibly appealing. Or, if one were to primarily use batteries, which wouldn't cost /that/ much (Relatively speaking), one could do it on (10000mi*50wh/mi=500kwh*($.1/kwh)=$50) $50 of electricity. With the gas bill as of today being somewhere north of $1000 for such a trip, and how staycations are reaching an all-time high, lol, I'd say there's room for such a vehicle.
Here's the elio car: