In the evergrowing automotive industry an important revolution took place with cars like the Nissan Leaf, Renault ZOE or the popular Tesla model 3. All of these varied car models aimed towards providing the public with cheap and sustainable mobility, the later model however proved itself to be a success in marketing terms considering the amount of vehicles sold in the world.
However, All of the cheapest BEVs of this era suffer from a pretty simple problem that our ancient ICEs never had any trouble with… Range! Most of us know well this specific drawback with BEV vehicles and how much of a hassle is to drive through winter or summer conditions… without being able to turn on the heater or the A/C in fear of losing our range and potentially get left stranded on the side of the road.
A very simple solution
Although the Tesla Model 3 is already very popular on its own with Elon Musk setting a gigafactory on China to help satisfy demand, An Austrian company known as Obrist Powertrain decided to convert a single Tesla Model 3 into a plug-in hybrid to help extend its range and general usability.
This obviously shook the foundations of the BEV community that 100% bets on the purity of batteries and motors, as well it rose some blisters around the Tesla community and yet.. this simple change brought many advantages over the stock Tesla model 3 configuration with only batteries and motors.
One of the main advantages was the elimination of the extra weight, but it also took off some of the range due to battery cell removal at the front. Instead… a small 2 cylinder engine with 54hp was mounted on the front as a simple range extender for the Tesla. Being fuel eficient also meant that… it only sipped half a gallon every 60 miles of driving in auxiliary power.
My thoughts?
Guiding myself on the fact that a stock Model 3 achieves 523km of autonomy on full battery power (324 miles) and the fact that the plug-in hybrid converted car now does over 1k km (621 miles) I would say this is pretty much a win for those who have range anxiety when driving a BEV in harsh weather.
Weather has been one of the larger hindrances to BEV cars on the road, being unable to turn on the AC/Heater because you know it will eat away at your available range. Having to wait countless hours behind other BEVs to charge your own car or for your own car to be fully charged… and yet that software update will delay it even more… forcing you to sleep at the charging station.
I think this is a far more viable approach to “the future” since you use most of the electric range on the city, if you later take a long trip 4 hours away… You really wont waste any time on charging at the station with the auxiliary power the gas generator makes. At the end of the day… I see this as the way to comfortably bypass the drawbacks of full BEV and arrive home earlier and more comfortably.
-What do you think about this conversion? tell me in the comments below!
Published in Thoughts and Takes
