Worth considering for a project

Most people have inverters these days, no one has a charger.
Did I ever post a link like this?
Maybe…

Anyways prices continue to plummet for these things.
Good candidate for a Charcoal conversion.

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That could be a blast with an electric golf cart.

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What if you did an electric conversion to a pick up truck.
Made a small producer and this mounted on a skid in the back.
Electric truck really only needs about 15-20 hp to push it down the road.
This rig could extend its range and you would not notice a difference in performance as you drive on wood…
Your plant is running at it sweet spot all the time, even when you are parked it is still operation refreshing the batteries until its fuel is exhausted…

The way I see it most rides are less than an hour for most people one way or the other.
This can run longer than one hour and you get a charged battery when you return from shopping or a visit.

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Wallace, JO came up with a similar idea a while ago too. I think its wery doable. The gasifier can be optimized perfectly to run on fixed demand. Yes the efficiency wuld lower becouse there are energy losses on electricity generation and storage but then a fixed demand gasifier can be made much more efficient in the first place. Not to mention the generator engine is easyer to optimize for woodgas thain a vehicle engine.

Waiting for electric vehicle prices to drop :smile:

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Prices will drop when Chinese electric cars arrive on our shores…

A good friend of mine had an electric Skoda truck ( many years ago to be honest )
It used lead acid batteries and the original transmission.
Power came from a 20 hp DC motor.
This was a fantastic truck for work in town.

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I saw a 76 Datsun pickup converted to electric similarly, electric drive directly to the transmission, batteries distributed in the engine compartment.

A wood gas charger unit would be very ideal, as it would also provide waste heat for vehicle heating. The present EV practice of using battery power for warming simply isn’t viable in winter conditions.

With a charger unit sized right, driving ranges should be similar to gasoline.

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Yup!
Spoken like a true Canadian too, Can I have a little heat with that?..
My thoughts were never far from how I could harness some of that heat to warm up on a frosty morning.

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Well BillS did have his factory Ford Ranger EV up for sale recently earlier in this year… You might ask him if still available.
S.U.

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Ha, l never thod about electric cars having problems with heating! Thats a huge drawback!

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Yeah. Northern climates and just windows demisting is a huge plug-in EV range killer. Wet-wet climates like mine add-in 100% windshield wipers usage too.
Now a small IC engine hybrid, or on-board gasifier would put-the-heat back into the equation.
S.U.

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Just shortening up made a couple of jokes and posted a video not really relevant.
Posted a link to Zither music ect ect…

I hear the Balkans are a nice place if you love the mountains and beaches.
Don’t need snow tyres unless you go looking for snow…

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Also the extreme cold cuts the battery capacity in about half. That’s why I sold my OEM 2000 Ford Ranger EV

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Well if you are looking for diversity Slovenia is the place to go. 3 climates and everything from beech to mountain in one country 150 miles across. Plus wery litle turists (for now), hope it stays that way.

On snow tires, not exactly. They are mandatory (and usefull) from 15 Nov to 15 Mar. Looking at the Balkans as a subtropical place is wrong. We dont have extreme cold but normal winter temps are in the -5 to -15 C region. Summers are 30 C ish.

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The newest electric cars have individually controlled heated seats, a heated steering wheel, and the ability to heat the outside mirrors, so cabin heat can be left off. A smartphone application allows the car to be pre-heated while still connected to the wall electrical cable. A 2018Tesla Long Range version can go 500 KM in good weather. A 2011 Nissan Leaf with the original battery might be able to cover 80 KM in the same weather. In cold weather, the Nissan does not have much regen, (if any), and the driver will be wearing thermal underwear, a jacket, and have legs and lap covered with a light blanket. and should stay within a 25 KM radius from home.

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I have a friend here in Canada of Italian decent that was looking at buy some property near his ancestral home in the north.
But it is too expensive.
He then started looking at Slovenia and Croatia because its just as nice not expensive and he found people that understood his old northern Italian accent and dialect and still close enough to his relatives for visits.

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In real cold you need high window defrost heat for simple safety and visibility, as your breath will flash freeze on the side windows and windshield. Even fog condensation on glass at moderate temps will be unsafe. Without interior heat at full capacity and warm up time, at minus 20 that electric car won’t be safe or practical to drive around the block.

For practical purposes they should have a popane interior warming system, but wood seems way better.

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I am pretty sure from the reading I have done that Tesla uses an air to air heat pump for heating and cooling it is also part of the battery thermal management system. I have read about people driving a Tesla Model S across the USA in the winter without trouble I don’t know how much it lowers the range but at 300 miles or more you can take a reasonable hit on the range and still be ok.

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I had a Diesel VW that could not generate enough heat when the temperature was bellow -20c to keep the windshield free of frost.
I think I got frost bite one year just driving to work!

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Heat pumps only operate efficiently down to close to the freezing point. And a battery powered heat pump is a pretty questionable proposition, an extra system and complexity to maybe triple wattage of heating, then falling sharply at lower temps.

The amounts of heat needed for interior warming in cold weather are best gotten from some combustion process. Using energy in it’s best application is a definition of efficiency, I think.

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Well you can always get the Workhorse it does have a ICE generator. But I will just wait and see I won’t second guess the engineers designing EV I am sure they understand that people won’t pay thousands of dollars for a new car that doesn’t have sufficient climate control.

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