Electric Toad

[peterbylt]

I came across some information on this in a different forum.

Rivian https://rivian.com/ is a company that will be building Electric Vehicles, They have a pickup truck and SUV planned to be released in 2021.

I first heard about these vehicles in a movie with Ewan McGregor called Long way up, where they rode Electric Motorcycles all the way from the tip of South America to Los Angeles, They used Prototype Rivians as the support Vehicles for the Harley Davidson Prototype LiveWire Electric Motorcycles.

In that movie a couple of times when the Batteries got low on the Rivians they were able to tow charge the Vehicle with great results.

These vehicles performed exceptionally good on this grueling journey.

Not confirmed, but the Founder of the company has said that the Vehicles will be able to be Flat towed behind an RV and it is rumored that you might be able to charge them while being flat towed, although this might degrade fuel mileage and performance.

Wishful thinking, these vehicles will have Regenerative Braking and that could be useful in a Jake Brake sort of way.

Peter

[benherman1]

It would be interesting to set one up to engage regenerative braking as "trailer brakes" based on the output of the bus brake controller. With this setup it shouldn't impact mileage any more than a regular trailer, would be safer, and would charge up nicely.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

I have been wondering about something like this for a few years now.  Seems like an interesting idea.  Get something for free while towing your car.

[Utahclaimjumper]

One way or other , you WILL PAY,,, it is written..>>>Dan

[Jim Blackwood]

OK but the cost is in the purchase price. If you can buy an ecar for reasonable money it makes sense. In fact the only thing about this idea that I don't like is that they are all still ugly as original sin. But then you could say that about nearly any car being made today. Why is it that Dodge seems to be the only major maker with some sorta good looking cars? Weird.

Jim

[6805eagleguy]

I'm not a car person but Tesla's look pretty sharp

[Utahclaimjumper]

I understand that Tesla owners have been disappointed in the car part of the vehicle.
they tend to not hold up all that well, and I'm finding many on used car lots way before they should be>>>Dan

[belfert]

I think a lot of Teslas appear on used car lots because the first owner leased the car.  People who own expensive cars like the Tesla tend to switch cars often.  A local used car dealer only sells electric cars.  There are 13 cars on the website and all 13 started as lease vehicles.

Tesla has a lot of fit and finish quality issues, but I have not heard of them not holding up well.

[belfert]

It would be interesting to set one up to engage regenerative braking as "trailer brakes" based on the output of the bus brake controller. With this setup it shouldn't impact mileage any more than a regular trailer, would be safer, and would charge up nicely.

Why would an electric car manufacturer want to take the time to do this?  The number of people who own both a motorhome and an electric car plus want to tow the electric car four down has got to be a extremely small market.

[freds]

Why would an electric car manufacturer want to take the time to do this?  The number of people who own both a motorhome and an electric car plus want to tow the electric car four down has got to be a extremely small market.

You can't flat tow electric cars as they must be energized so as to not have the motor destroyed by eddy currents.

Buy hey I do remember a couple of episodes of ICE Road truckers where they had pusher rigs for very heavy loads to get up the hills. It would be very nice to have cyber truck that could assist on grades and recover energy on the downhill side.

Maybe that's the place to lobby for it.

[Nova Eona]

You can't flat tow electric cars as they must be energized so as to not have the motor destroyed by eddy currents.

Seems like there's a pretty simple (in concept) solution right there then - have a 'toad mode' on the EV which engages the drive motors just enough to keep this from happening; could easily use the regenerative brakes to make enough power to sustain that while in motion I'm sure.  Hasn't been developed yet, but as the EV market continues to grow it's pretty much inevitable.

Heck, looking ahead a few years I wouldn't be shocked to see autonomous EVs come with connection hardpoints front and rear - going for a long drive on the highway somewhere?  Your car automatically starts or joins an existing train of others heading the same way, with the workload shared.  Clearly on the sci-fi side compared to today's capabilities, but not that far fetched.  At that point, you don't even have to hook the toad up to the bus, just tell it to link itself up while you're on the way out.

Oh, also, saw an article the other day about a Jeep Wrangler EV that's coming out with a manual transmission - who knows with that one.

[richard5933]

...At that point, you don't even have to hook the toad up to the bus, just tell it to link itself up while you're on the way out....

Maybe you could just send it a command to 'follow' and it would do just that - stay behind you the entire trip like a puppy dog on a leash. If autonomous vehicles do come on the scene like some are predicting which can follow other vehicles in traffic it would seem like having your toad follow you to the campground should be possible one day.

Of course it would be freaky to see it passing you up when some high-tech car thief figures out how to hi-jack the 'follow me' command.

[belfert]

You can't flat tow electric cars as they must be energized so as to not have the motor destroyed by eddy currents.

Supposedly Rivian electric vehicles will be able to be flat towed.  That was how this thread started.

[luvrbus]

We saw a model S Tesla on fire yesterday at a charging station ,EV are our future but they still have some bugs to be worked out ,I'll probably never own one 

[belfert]

There were almost 190,000 thousand vehicle fires in the USA in 2019 so it is not surprising an electric vehicle happened to burn.