Can a conventional car be used to charge an electric car?

Question

A friend who drives a Leaf recently came very close to running out of charge, which prompted another friend to ask if it was possible to "jumpstart" a Leaf from another car. Obviously you couldn't do that in the usual way, but in principle you could use another car as a generator to charge the battery. In practice, is there a convenient way to do this?

Answer 1

No, you cannot.

Well, you might be able to, but not in a feasible way in any likely manner.

Electric Vehicles commonly have two separate electric circuits.

One running at the normal 12V, which ties to all the common electronics that all other types of cars have. Light bulbs, radios, in many cases also a starter motor for the gasoline engine if it in fact has one those (which the Leaf doesn't if I'm not mistaken).

The other runs at a voltage ranging between 96V and nearer 300V (depending on brand and such), which drives the motors.

For why? You may ask.

Well, if the electric motor is 30kW, which is very modest for where the Electric cars are headed, but I'd imagine a Leaf being somewhere near that, that would be:

• 30000W / 12V = 2500A at 12V
• 30000W / 48V = 625A at 48V
• 30000W / 96V = 312.5A at 96V
• 30000W / 150V = 200A at 150V
• 30000W / 300V = 100A at 300V

As you can see, getting that power to the motors takes quite an insane current at only 12V and relaistically it only starts becoming really feasible at 150V. Some cars then have a 96V battery, I believe, and drive the engines such that the final wiring, for the longer part towards the motor effectively runs at hundreds of volts.

But even having the controller doing that right next to the batteries, 2500A for 12V input would mean adding extra support beams, if you look at the cross section of metal needed to sustain that somewhat loss free.

So, if you want to do that you need:

1. A step-up converter from 12V to whatever is needed (which may differ between brands, unless you use the 230VAC input)
2. Run your engine at 3000rpm+ to get maximum alternator output (wasting a lot of fuel)
3. Thick Cables
4. a HUGE amount of patience (and fuel), since your alternator usually can only supply 1.5 to 5kW of power, depending on your car's size and type, of which some is always wasted by the car itself. (And those batteries usually range from 10kWh to 80kWh, AFAIK)

EDIT/Addition based on your comment:

To clarify, from memory a plug-in Prius has 4kWh spare power, with an actual range of about 15km flat roads (here in the Netherlands is a very good place to get those numbers), which is about 10miles, give or take. In some situations it may be 15miles, and I believe they blue-sky report 18-ish miles themselves. Regardless, the mile charge requirement for such a car is likely between 0.3 and 0.8kWh depending on the trip. Maybe the leaf gets 0.25kWh per mile average, because it has no fuel system to lug around, but I know only people with Plug-In Priusses and Plug-In Outlanders, and factory data is not to be trusted.

It is unlikely the car charging can actually supply 1.5kW to the outside, since the alternators get designed for about ({everything the car needs} + {what could possibly be added})*1.3; so that usually leaves no more than 50% of the actual alternator power, usually less, to be gotten from the car, while running at the engine speed at which the alternator is at optimum.

Note how I say "alternator at optimum" this speed is nearly never the best unloaded operating point of the engine, so your fuel consumption will be very much sub-optimal.

If I'd make a real-world estimation, you could possibly take out 600W (=50A already!!) from any medium-size car, maybe 1kW from a large one, a small/efficient car will not enjoy giving you more than 400W at most. So, let's blue-sky this, knowing it will never work out this positively:

You have a source of 1kW at 12V, or you know what, blue-sky: 15V.

That means: 1000W / 15V =~ 66A

Let's say you have 10mm^2 cables (quite thick for jumpers already) running to the converter that turns it into 300VDC (again, blue-sky, you take the highest voltage that's feasible, to allow a lower current, which allows lower losses, but we'll see that soon enough), these cables are a measly 3meters in total (so 1.5meter each) and connected at the alternator, so no losses inside the car itself (again very blue sky).

The cable then has about 2 mili Ohm per meter, gives a reduction of 132 millivolt per meter, is a total reduction of 0.39V (unfairly rounded down for blue-sky) in the cables. Peanuts, right? Does mean, however that your power has already dropped by 26W:

Power at converter: ~66A * (15V - 0.39V) =~ 974W

And that's not even considering the contact resistance of 5 to 35 milli Ohm per clamp, which would take away a minimum of another 44W. But, we will ignore that as well.

Now, up-converting that to a high voltage is not lossless. Technically at these scales the best you can hope for on any realistic budget is 85% efficiency. So, we'll happily round that up to 90%.

Output Power at the Converter at 300V: 0.9 * 974W =~ 877W.

At 300V that is only: 877W / 300V =~ 2.9A , which you can easily transport over 5meter in a pair of 3mm^2 cables, as they will be about 6 to 7 milli Ohm per meter, making for a loss over 10meters of complete path of only 0.7W, and since at this point we've already imagined away close to 80W in losses, we can easily ignore that. Same goes for connector losses. Also assumed to be zero.

So, at the car we are allowed in this blue-sky world to imagine it being a nice constant stream of 877W at 300V.

It is highly unlikely the car itself has no electronics, since it will have an input range (e.g. 250V to 350V). So, there is the conversion loss again, but probably going the other way, from 300V to 180-ish volt maybe? Either way, if it's only drop or boost, it may be assumed to be around the same 85% efficiency. Again, we'll blue-sky that up to 90%.

So, towards the battery we get: 877W * 0.9 =~ 789W

It's easy to now assume any kind of battery just absorbs that and then delivers that right to the motor. Very forward looking cars have some form of conditioned Lithium based cell, which would offer a base absorption of up to 97% in practice when charged at 1/10th their capacity. Luckily at 18kWh this is 1/10th or less, so that's fine. As a note, there are quite a few brand at the time of writing that still use NiCd, which have a much lower charging efficiency. It would be fairer to say, in a finished storage product featuring Lithium based cells it's likely to hang around 92%, due to the required conditioning and margin over life time. (Over 10 years this margin is still greatly optimistic, by the way!).

But, I'll just use the 97% as the final number: Battery Stored Energy per unit time: 0.97*789 = 765W.

Miles per hour charged, if I'm allowed to switch back to slightly more realistic than perfect blue-sky, with 382.5Wh per mile, would be 2 miles per hour.

Say you ran out only 4 miles away from a place where you'd be comfortable staying until it's charged enough to continue, you'd need at least 2 hours, but then knowing that if it's a bit colder than "specification temperature" for the parts, you may end up running out half a mile before you get there if you're too tight on the time.

And to then completely answer your comment: Bear in mind, that whether you're waiting for a friend to tow you, or a friend to charge you, you're waiting for that friend, regardless. So you're effectively adding 2 hours to that wait time. And it'll have to be a friend with a car that supplies 1kW at a jumper-capable point, so you're already cutting out a group of friends just on that requirement making your chances even slimmer. Although, I do find, that people with smaller cars in certain cultures tend to be happier to wait for 4 hours than people with larger cars to wait for 2, but I'm not a sociologist, so I'll leave that out of consideration.

Oh, and also spending at least 20 times (gut feeling it's more like 100 times) the amount of fuel towing someone with an electric vehicle in "release"/"unclutched" mode over 4 miles would cost.

Answer 2

Old post but I want to leave my experience since I did this in real life. I have a fiat 500e (well, my wife does). Same, some day she was so close to run out of battery. Nowadays there is an app called chargepoint or others that will show you the charging stations and the "open outlets" where you can charge your car, so, there is so little change that you are running out of charge without making it to any station or outlet. BUT, i wanted to do it anyway, "just in case" and because I live in florida and hurricanes happens and I always want to have a plan B. So I bought an inverter, 3000W 12v to 110v. Simple as that. I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited 1999, with stock alternator of 120a, but I did a common upgrade for the alternator (direct fit) of the dodge, that will be 160a, for less than 90U$. The standard 110v charger is 12a or 1350w. So an efficient inverter will need a little more that 100a at 12v to generate that 12a at 110v. I connected the inverter with the shortest and bigger cables that I could, and with the jeep on, I connected the fiat, and HUALA, it charges. Its 110v charge so will charge around 6 miles each hour. Not best scenario.

Another thing that I thought is to pull the car. If the car is on, will generate energy itself when moving, to recharge the battery, in this case the regenerator of the fiat could even regenerate up to 36KWh (the screen says that...) so, pulling hard from the car will full charge the car in less than 40 minutes... hahaha. Anyway, I was thinking if I could use 2 inverters, to generate 240v output in 2 fases, to charge quicker the car, adding a secondary alternator.

Answer 3

I am not an expert on electric vehicles, but I believe that they are only equipped to charge of mains (110v, 220v) household electric. Since non-electric cars usually only have 12v electric circuits, this would not be possible without an 'inverter' to step the voltage up to mains voltages. Even with this, you would probably have to sit with 'jump leads' on for several hours to get a charge to get you home. You would probably be better towing the electric vehicle to a charge point.

Answer 4

Sure you can, if you have a portable generator in your car. Some EVs won't change if the generator gets loaded down and the frequency drops much below 60 (or 50) cycles. The governor might need some adjustment to correct this or else use a bigger generator. Also the lack of a neutral to ground bond on many generators causes EVs to not charge. This can be corrected with a single piece of wire.

You can pull the EV and use its regenerative braking to change it. This may not work if the EV is completely dead though.

Answer 5

Let's look at the possibility of charging an electric car from a conventional car.

There are two options. Either you could use the battery and slowly deplete it to provide the energy, or you could use the alternator.

Batteries are usually around 50 Ah, at 12 volts. So they have 600 Ah of energy. But -- that is for slowly depleting the battery during 20 hours. Peukert's law says that if you deplete a 50 Ah battery with 150 amps, and the Peukert constant is 1.25, you have only 18 Ah of capacity in the battery. That's 216 watt-hours.

An electric car consumes maybe about 180 watt-hours per kilometer. Charging losses are probably around 7%, and if you use an inverter to convert 12V into 230V, that's maybe another 7%, so 14% total losses. So the 180 watt-hours out requires 209 watt-hours in.

Therefore, the conventional car battery provides enough range for only one kilometer. That's not practical. On the plus side, Peukert's law reduces the capacity of the battery only due to slow chemical reactions. Once you let the conventional car battery rest, it's no longer exhausted, and can start the conventional car again.

Another possibility is that the alternator provides the energy. Typically normal electric cars may not be charged slower than 8 amperes (because 8 amperes is the recommended charging rate for Schuko connectors) although I'm sure Tesla has an option for everything but the kitchen sink in the menu. So 8 amperes times 230 volts is 1840 watts. To provide 1840 watts at 7% loss in inverter, that's 1978.5 watts in, which is 165 amperes.

That will only work if your car has at least 165 ampere alternator, and you have access to a 2000 watt 12 volt inverter. Note a 165 ampere alternator won't provide 165 amperes at idling speeds so you need to at least triple your RPM (which requires you to continuously push the accelerator pedal). That will most likely at least triple the engine fuel consumption from 0.5 liters per hour (usual idling consumption) to 1.5 liters per hour plus whatever increase the alternator creates. At 58% alternator efficiency and 93% inverter efficiency, 1840 watts is 3411 watts of engine power. At 25% engine marginal efficiency at low load, that's 13645 watts of gasoline (13.645 kW). One liter of gasoline is about 34 MJ or 9.4 kWh, so this alternator load provides around 1.5 liters of extra fuel consumption.

So your fuel consumption is already at 3 liters / hour, half due to engine friction and pumping losses, half due to extra load from alternator.

The 1840 watts after charging losses is 1711 watts, which provides range for 9.5 kilometers per hour.

Thus, you use 3 liters per 9.5 kilometers or 31.6 liters per 100 km. I'm not sure if you call that economical, but I wouldn't.

I have a better idea: use a Honda EU22i generator that provides 1800 watts of continuous power. It should barely be able to charge an electric car at the minimum setting. It has a 3.6 liter fuel tank and runs for 3.2 hours at maximum load, so it consumes 1.125 liters per hour whereas the car consumed 3 liters per hour. That would cut your fuel consumption to one third.

Also, as a benefit, you can carry a Honda EU22i with your hands and it's so small you can put it anywhere, no need to have enough parking space. Also a Honda EU22i won't require you to continuously push the accelerator pedal to keep the engine at an ideal RPM or else you would risk draining your 12 volt starter battery.