Range extender starts charging battery after 100-150 miles of EV-only driving

[Scout Fan]

I'd be willing to bet this means the EREV Versions will receive a smaller battery pack than the EV only trucks. so 100-150 miles between generator kick on.. 500 total. so in 500 miles the generator could run 3-5 times charging the battery back up.

Which is awesome really... minus road trips my ICE GEN will hardly ever kick on. 100-150 miles would do anything I can imagine in a day.

Totally agree. 150 miles of battery only range is plenty for the vast majority of uses. Most Harvester owners will likely see their gas engine range extenders kick in even less than they anticipate.

 

[Melrose]

I’ve read that the Harvester is a generator, designed to charge the EV battery, and that it can add 150 miles of range on top of 350 miles of range supplied by the battery pack. OK, sounds good!

If the EREV models average ~3 miles per kWh, then the generator would need to produce 50kWh to add 150 miles of range (leaving efficiency losses aside). So you head out, traveling 60mph. In less than 6 hours your battery would be empty, but thankfully the generator kicked in at the 100 mile mark, and ran for ~7 hours generating 50kWh. This scenario suggests a 7kW generator …+/-12hp. It will be interesting to learn how heat is managed, especially if it can run while parked. Hoping that sharper and better schooled minds can fine tune these assumptions and shed some light on how Scout has solved this.

 

[Mousehunter]

A lot is not detailed in the implementation. Personally I suspect that at best, the generator will cover the load of powering the vehicle at highway speed (with the AC or heater on)... That said, it is a range extender - so it might not cover the full load of the vehicle at highway speed, and especially will probably not cover the full load of the vehicle at highway speed when the load is increased (30mph headwind, trailer, etc...). If that is the case, you still will not have unlimited gas range - you still will need to stop and wait for charging eventually, only not as soon as without the extender.

Flip side probably depends where you are. This is almost certainly going to be a level 4 charging vehicle (it will have an 800v architecture). With hope, the level 4 chargers will be coming out soon. Depending on location, if level 4 becomes available for you, then charge times will be going down - so there is less drawback to being full EV. Depending on it is implemented in the vehicle (battery and battery cooling), Level 4 could in theory give most of a full charge in 20 minutes. Sadly, the grid itself will be a limiting factor - a bank of many level 4 chargers is going to need one hell of a lot of electrical capacity. Each Level 4 charger needs more AC than a fairly large house.

 

[Melrose]

Plus they have a couple of years to engage improved efficiencies and regen capabilities.