[Swordsmith]

A few years back, I was discussing electric cars with a friend, and came up with an idea; what if you had an electric vehicle with a generator that could be used to keep the batteries full, so you could drive long distances without stopping, while being able to run short hop entirely off house-based recharges.

That part has since been realized with the Volt, albiet well out of my price range, but I can hope that someday someone will come up with a sub 20K version of that plan.

But another part of my dream scheme was that the generator would be modular; unplug it from the car, slide it out, store it in the garage, when you know you won't be needing it. This way you don't have to haul around all that extra weight, so your battery charge lasts longer and you have more cargo room.

The Volt doesn't do that; you carry the generation system with you everywhere. You can also run off the ICE itself, which wasn't part of my scheme, but it makes it easy to see why you wouldn't be able to easily disconnect.

OK enough backstory.

So reading around on the forum today, I ran across the Pusher trailer idea. Basically, build a separate self contained motorized trailer using the "other" system, whether it be an electric trailer designed to allow short range cruising with your ICE car's engine off, or whether an ICE trailer designed to allow an all-electric to drive in the "infinite range" of an ICE without needing recharge, just refueling.

I'm sure it's been thought of before, but the idea was new to me... what if you put a generator in the trailer instead of a pusher? The same idea as the ICE pusher, giving "infinite" range to a straight electric. And similar to the ICE pusher, and my "modular" idea, it could be left at home for normal use, added to the vehicle only when the extended range is needed. But unlike my "modular" idea, it would be simple to physically remove; all you have to be able to do is dismount a trailer from the hitch, no heavy lifting. And easy to hook up, again, just mount a trailer on the hitch, instead of heavy lifting and struggling to get fitted into it's slot in the vehicle.

Why would this be better than the pusher ICE? Well without actually doing the math, thought experiment says there's a whole lot of weight and engineering involved in getting the power to the ground, and that cars aren't really designed to be pushed around. I know people have done this, but it still sounds, frankly, terrifying. But more to the point, I would think ICE plus generator would weigh less than ICE plus everything it takes to get power to the ground. I could easily be wrong there.

Anyway, obviously running physical power up from a trailer to the wheels of the car itself would be even more difficult... but running electric power would require nothing more than a cable and the plug that the vehicle already has.

So, I'm going to look into this idea some more, but I thought I'd get it out there, see what people think... and of course have folks point me to the 20+ threads where other people are already doing this.

Questions:
1) What's the idea car to do this with? (probably unanswerable... but maybe some are ruled out as clearly being unable to lug a trailer around)

1a) in order to answer 2) we need to pick some actual car and work backwards. Answers for 2) will be different for other cars, but should at least be in the range of "possible" or "impossible"

2) How big would the trailer have to be?

2a) How big would the ICE, generator, and fuel tank have to be

2a1) How much power would the generator have to supply?

2b) What sort of trailer would work? Ideally we're talking a streamlined motorcycle one wheel, lightweight, low cD, easy to maneuver. Worst case we're talking double tandem tractor-trailer rig, which would make the endeavor pointless for anything short of an electric Semi.

3) would an alternative to the trailer be better

3a) back to my "slide in modular plan". Benefit, would not alter the drag of the vehicle, would not add the difficulty of driving that any trailer does, and would presumably be lighter than any trailer. Detractions, harder to mount/dismount, takes up internal room, and what to do about the exhaust of the ICE? Oh, noise inside the cabin, too.

3b) rooftop mount version of the modular plan. Assuming this is light enough, it could be used on any electric capable of supporting a roof rack

3c) trailer hitch rack. Again, if light enough, would work on any car.

3d) bed mount, in pickup-style electrics. Maybe even do conversion on regular electric cars to turn them into pickups to facilitate this.

3bc&dI) since these aren't inside the vehicle, perhaps a simple overhead lift system could be used to mount and dismount, more easily than the "slide in"