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Ford F-150 Electric Pickup May Get Newly Patented Range Extender in Its Bed


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45 minutes ago, silvrsvt said:

I’m excited to see this electric F-150 I think it will do well. I wonder how much they will sell. 

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1 hour ago, silvrsvt said:

...So I did some digging....the 1.0L Ecoboost weighs only about 215lbs, which would make it a perfect fit as a range extender and its only about a foot wide. 

 

It is indeed a compact design, but seriously, do you need a turbocharged engine in that type of generator installation? And, don't forget to add in the cooling system for it. I was thinking if the unit designers insist on an internal combustion unit, a single vane rotary Wankel engine would make for a much more compact power unit.

Edited by twintornados
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10 minutes ago, twintornados said:

Interesting article from 2013.....Mazda developing a "range extender" with a 330cc rotary motor....

https://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/23/mazda2-extended-range-rotary-ev/

 

But rotaries are terrible for MPGs...

If you really wanted to you, an air cooled diesel would work...the emissions not so much :)

That is the other reason why the 1.0L Ecoboost might be a good option-low CO2 emissions. 

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I don't think you'd need the 1.0 EB for that function. Maybe just the 1.0 without turbo. Or cut off the last cylinder and go with a 660cc 2 cylinder - shouldn't be too hard to engineer and it will probably weight ~150 lbs? Still heavy but not enough so to make it impossible to add or remove from the cargo bed.

 

 

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The one problem I see is where to put the fuel tank.

 

If it is a modular design, it needs to come with its own fuel tank otherwise it can't be fully modular. I doubt it will pass crash test if the fuel tank is exposed in the cargo bed like the patent drawing.

 

But if you use an on board fuel tank it means all F-150 EV will need to have that fuel tank engineered into the chassis. It adds structural weight and complicates crash safety protection. IMO, range extender on EV is ultimately a compromised idea that won't be widely accepted/adopted for this reason. You are better off just making a PHEV instead if range is really that much of a concern. 

Edited by bzcat
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32 minutes ago, akirby said:

Why not just a modified off the shelf portable generator?

 

30 minutes ago, jcartwright99 said:

Yeah the current 1.0 turbo is overkill. Even a non turbo 1.0 may be too much for this application. Two cylinder seems about right.

 

For a range extender you need to be able to replenish the batteries at a rate that is fast enough to actually be helpful.  The 1.0L ecoboost is rated at 125Hp @6000 rpm.  That is 93.2kW.  Running at peak power output it would probably take 2 hours to recharge a full battery given the assumed losses in the generator.  However peak power is not the best place to run for efficiency purposes.  If we look at peak torque (170 @1400 rpm) we get a power output of 45 Hp or 33.6kW.  The minimum power specific fuel consumption is probably somewhere in between those values.  What the turbocharger will do is allow you to run that engine and extract as much thermal energy as possible, and because it should be controlled to a specific rpm, you can achieve much greater fuel efficiency and better emissions using the turbo.  You also don't have to worry about any accessories sapping power or a drive train.  The generator would be connected directly to the drive shaft and can be back driven by the EV battery to act as the starter.

 

Your normal gas powered generator isn't going to be adequate to do the job.

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34 minutes ago, Flying68 said:

 

 

For a range extender you need to be able to replenish the batteries at a rate that is fast enough to actually be helpful.  The 1.0L ecoboost is rated at 125Hp @6000 rpm.  That is 93.2kW.  Running at peak power output it would probably take 2 hours to recharge a full battery given the assumed losses in the generator.  However peak power is not the best place to run for efficiency purposes.  If we look at peak torque (170 @1400 rpm) we get a power output of 45 Hp or 33.6kW.  The minimum power specific fuel consumption is probably somewhere in between those values.  What the turbocharger will do is allow you to run that engine and extract as much thermal energy as possible, and because it should be controlled to a specific rpm, you can achieve much greater fuel efficiency and better emissions using the turbo.  You also don't have to worry about any accessories sapping power or a drive train.  The generator would be connected directly to the drive shaft and can be back driven by the EV battery to act as the starter.

 

Your normal gas powered generator isn't going to be adequate to do the job.


I was thinking heavy duty but your points are well taken.

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I should add that the only two RPM's that it would run at are 1800 or 3600 depending on what type of generator they use (to get 60Hz power).  So the choice of engine largely depends on that.  I would assume the Ecoboost would be most efficient at 3600 rpm in order to spin the turbo, but they could change to a different turbo that develops boost at a lower engine rpm.

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With a range extender, the goal isn't to keep the battery fully charged, it's to enable say,

double the range when starting a journey with a fully charged battery. if the BEV F150

comes with a 100 Kwhr battery and it takes four hours to discharge it or 25 Kwhr,

then something like a 12 Kwhr charger would be enough.

 

If the goal is to feed a battery,  it will behave like the ICE in a PHEV in "sustain" mode.

Edited by jpd80
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1 hour ago, jpd80 said:

With a range extender, the goal isn't to keep the battery fully charged, it's to enable say,

double the range when starting a journey with a fully charged battery. if the BEV F150

comes with a 100 Kwhr battery and it takes four hours to discharge it or 25 Kwhr,

then something like a 12 Kwhr charger would be enough.

 

If the goal is to feed a battery,  it will behave like the ICE in a PHEV in "sustain" mode.

Except if your cruise power draw is dramatically larger than your extenders ability to charge, you don't want to be in the position where you have fuel in the tank of the extender, but not enough juice to go anywhere.  You also don't want to have to run the extender all the time in order to achieve full range.  Ideally there would be some set point, like 25% to 50% of battery capacity remaining before the extender would kick on and provide charge to the battery before it shuts off.  You are probably looking at a 5 gallon tank at the most, so it won't run indefinitely.  It becomes an optimization issue, what ICE/Generator combo can provide the most power for smallest weight and give the lowest emissions.

 

13 minutes ago, 92merc said:

If they use the 1.0 engine as a generator, it makes no sense to have the turbo.  Turbo is for power.  They wouldn't need that power for generation.  Would be more efficient as a NA engine.

Power is precisely what you need.  You achieve the best thermal efficiency using a turbo (otherwise the exhaust is wasted energy).  Running at a fixed rpm, the turbo can also be optimized.  NA engines are not more efficient at equivalent power levels, such as this where the load will not vary and the engine will be running at a fixed rpm.  You have to shift your thinking from one of "NA provides a lower power level and forced provides more power" to one of which provides a fixed power level with the greatest efficiency.

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3 hours ago, Flying68 said:

Except if your cruise power draw is dramatically larger than your extenders ability to charge, you don't want to be in the position where you have fuel in the tank of the extender, but not enough juice to go anywhere.  You also don't want to have to run the extender all the time in order to achieve full range.  Ideally there would be some set point, like 25% to 50% of battery capacity remaining before the extender would kick on and provide charge to the battery before it shuts off.  You are probably looking at a 5 gallon tank at the most, so it won't run indefinitely.  It becomes an optimization issue, what ICE/Generator combo can provide the most power for smallest weight and give the lowest emissions.

You’re over complicating this, you’ll see when Ford releases it.

when you go on a long trip and the range extender is attached, it starts adding back power when the vehicle is up to highway speed, not when the battery is depleted.

 

Range extension is different to what you think, a vehicle that’s capable of driving with a near fully discharged battery is by definition a PHEV.
WhatI described is not sustained recharge and not intended to be, it only slows the depletion of the battery by 50% at regular load level - exactly what range extension is all about.

 

Besides that, a truck getting 20mpg is supplying about 30-35 hp to drive a truck at 60 mph, I don’t think the power need will be as great as you think.

Edited by jpd80
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I'm trying to find it and I can''t.  But there was some sort of really small opposed piston and/or opposed cylinder design I saw a few years ago that was really compact.  It was specifically designed to run at constant state for power generation.  One of those could be a good fit for something like this application.

 

It was similar to this OPOC Ecomotor design.

http://www.hybrid-engine-hope.com/state_of_art

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55 minutes ago, silvrsvt said:

Opposed Piston engines haven't quite worked right since their inception. I know there is some modern takes on them, but they are using diesel/Kerosene/jet fuels, which wouldn't work for gasoline grade engines. 

 

Isn't this what a "boxer" engine uses, as found in Porsche and Subaru?

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12 minutes ago, valve said:

 

Isn't this what a "boxer" engine uses, as found in Porsche and Subaru?

 

No they operate like normal engines, with Spark plugs/valve trains on the "top" (side of the engine)

e4195d1ccb4caae92382aa0826e24ae0

Opposed engines have pistons that face one another and use compression (like a diesel) to spark the fuel in most cases

crank-block-loop.gif

 

 

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