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Old 01-08-2020, 02:35 PM   #22 (permalink)
aerohead
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range extender

Quote:
Originally Posted by slowmover View Post
The trailer is not unfairly priced. It is likely to be on the road in another 75-years after being rebuilt at about the thirty and sixty year mark.

Travel trailers of ordinary construction are good for about ten years.

If it could be used as a range extender I'd like to see the testing. Not a disbeliever, but sceptical at utility.

Hybrid makes more sense. Same as for the trucking biz.
I believe AeroStealth has found one in Germany,which also provides traction drive,coordinated with the tow vehicle,as Mr.Sharkey (on the original Tesla Roadster team) did with his Porsche 944 range-extending Golf/Rabbit trailer.When accelerating or hill climbing,the trailer assists the tow vehicle,so as not to impede surrounding traffic.On down-grades,both tow vehicle and trailer harvest the gravitational potential rather than braking to prevent over-speed.On the road,aerodynamic forces out-shadow rolling resistance,so one could essentially 'double' the capacity of the battery pack.At the campsite,there's no need of a generator.Owning one would be pretty lame,when one could simply rent one for holiday travel,letting others utilize it for the rest of the year (like a washer and drier at a laundromat).
If carefully matched in frontal area,and with an 'accordion' gap-filler,Cd 0.10 is pretty easy to achieve for the trailer in tow,as was found for the Union-Pacific streamline tail car of the 1930s.
For aerodynamic die-hards,it's also possible to have a trailer with negative drag coefficient,although at reduced space utilization.
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