Just a little conjecture here, but i find the whole experiment fascinating.
A tesla model S is around 5000 pounds. not the lightest car on the road by any standard...but towing it behind a consumer Ford F150 will drag the mileage of the truck to 14MPG. not too shabby compared to your long-haul tractor trailers that get about 6...but thats the free rolling weight of the vehicle, not its weight with regenerative braking turned on. id be very curious to know what the final hitch and tow weights are respectively.
from what i can tell, a supercharger will get you charged in about an hour. so...70 miles? most trucks cant maintain that speed in hills or corners, so unless you live in nebraska, youll be on the road a lot longer than an hour. other states might not let you hit 70 at all....can it be done at lower speeds? given the wind conditions on any given day, you might not be able to safely maintain a 70mph tow. other states (california) impose tow restrictions on just how fast you can go.
RV owners probably wont buy a tesla based on this knowledge but id love to see more data from this kind of testing...could the energy from the regeneration be used to charge RV batteries too? can this regenerative system be applied to trucks to power heaters and air conditioners during layovers and downtime?
A whole host of 90s pickups are ~5000lb depending on how they're spec'd out.
The Model S is fat. But so are a lot of other modern cars so whatever. 5k isn't that much at the end of the day though. Perfectly within the bounds of what a scrapper or farmer will tow with a compact truck.
>not too shabby compared to your long-haul tractor trailers that get about 6
Heavy trucks punch an 8'6" by 13'6" hole in the air. The comparison is comical.
But it’s not just 5k lbs free rolling. The regenerative brakes are an opposing force and increasing the load. So, it could be equivalent to 10k lbs. I have no idea how to calculate that though.
Remember that the weight of a load is entirely meaningless when pulling at a constant speed on level ground. The force experienced by the tower is entirely a result of air resistance and road friction.
On level terrain, the weight of the load is only relevant for the very transient period of coming up to speed. That is the acceleration phase.
> So, it could be equivalent to 10k lbs. I have no idea how to calculate that though
It wouldn't have a good equivalent mass, since it would be entirely through rolling resistance that you'd get that equivalency. A better comparison would be wind resistance.
I think you have just described something like a traditional or plug-in hybrid that recovers energy that would be wasted under braking or puts the ICE under additional load to keep the specific fuel consumption as low as possible
A tesla model S is around 5000 pounds. not the lightest car on the road by any standard...but towing it behind a consumer Ford F150 will drag the mileage of the truck to 14MPG. not too shabby compared to your long-haul tractor trailers that get about 6...but thats the free rolling weight of the vehicle, not its weight with regenerative braking turned on. id be very curious to know what the final hitch and tow weights are respectively.
from what i can tell, a supercharger will get you charged in about an hour. so...70 miles? most trucks cant maintain that speed in hills or corners, so unless you live in nebraska, youll be on the road a lot longer than an hour. other states might not let you hit 70 at all....can it be done at lower speeds? given the wind conditions on any given day, you might not be able to safely maintain a 70mph tow. other states (california) impose tow restrictions on just how fast you can go.
RV owners probably wont buy a tesla based on this knowledge but id love to see more data from this kind of testing...could the energy from the regeneration be used to charge RV batteries too? can this regenerative system be applied to trucks to power heaters and air conditioners during layovers and downtime?