At 07:52 PM 4/16/2011, Scott Daniel  - Turbovans wrote:
>so ...charge up your gas generator batteries with your home grid-power ..
>then while driving ..
>no energy from the vehicle itself, or it's fuel, is used to run the
>gas generator.
>
>so 'maybe' ...you guys run the numbers ..
>there could be a slight gain using this method.

When you factor in cost of batteries and/or weight of batteries, and
leaving out the environmental and energy costs to make the batteries,
it's a big loss.  You can't get by the huge penalty of having to burn
the stuff.  Now Otmar's electric Vanagon <-- Vanagon content... would
win by plugging in (which I presume it does anyway) depending what he
pays for electricity - remember the fuel-burning plants only achieve
high plant efficiencies by finding commercial uses for the heat
wasted by the generating process which has the same thermal
constraints as our engines.  But he wins by taking the electricity
and using it directly for motive power, just as the Prius does.

Yrs,
d