Quote:
Originally Posted by Tekkie
Hi Daox and thanks for the welcome 
Yes I agree, excluding the alternator is an advantage in direct cost mpg. I guess you live in a warm climate? Im in the UK and I cant see a car battery of say 85AH lasting long if it has to take a drain of starting several times, defrosting the front screen, defrosting the rear screen, heating the cabin, headlights, radio, wipers and so on.
Lets not forget that the cost saved in mpg is offset by the cost of manually charging also.
Also modern batteries are damaged and reduce capacity if discharged past a certain level.
In some climates I guess it can work, but in others I dought its worth even trying. |
Deep cycle batteries are a consideration when doing such a thing as deleting the alternator.
The MPG savings are NOT offset entirely by the cost of recharging the battery, especially if you're charging off someone else's connection. Even if you're not charging off someone else's connection, you're only going to pay around 30 cents to recharge a dead battery (or less, depending on where you are), versus the number of miles that you can get up to 3MPG better than you normally would be getting.
Let's assume that you get 1MPG better for a whole tank of gas, where you would normally only see 15 MPG. Now you're getting 16MPG.
At 16 MPG, you run out a full (10 gallon) tank of gas, for a total of 160 miles. With gas at $2.00 a gallon, that's $20.00 to fill up, or 8 cents per mile.
The mileage difference between 150 per tank and 160 per tank is about 80 cents, that you've saved (in this example), and it only cost you about 30 cents to top off the battery a couple times between fills.
Keep in mind, that's only during this example. YMMV, probably will save you even more, since I'm not aware of anyone paying a high enough rate to require 30cent refills of the battery, and only paying $2.00 for gas.