Charging with a Honda generator for emgerency

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cossie1600

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
243
I am thinking about buying a Honda 2000w generator for the house as a backup for emgerency. It's probably an overkill since I live in the city. Still, it might not be a bad idea to have one as I went through having no power at all and it isn't fun. Anyway my question is would the EU2000 work as an emgerency charger for the EV cars? It is stupid to do it, but just curious to see if it would work.
 
The Honda EU series will work (an inverter type is necessary for the Tesla charger), but you have to make sure that you have an EVSE that will tell the car to draw an appropriate amount of power from it. You also have to ground it properly.

Connecting the generator properly to your house is probably more difficult to set up than getting the car to charge unless you're just going to run an extension cord to your refrigerator.
 
cossie1600 said:
I am thinking about buying a Honda 2000w generator for the house as a backup for emgerency. It's probably an overkill since I live in the city. Still, it might not be a bad idea to have one as I went through having no power at all and it isn't fun. Anyway my question is would the EU2000 work as an emgerency charger for the EV cars? It is stupid to do it, but just curious to see if it would work.

It works, but for continues load it is rated for 1600 watt, 13.3 amp @ 120volt.
Remember though that at that rate you are adding 3 (citydrive) to 5 (55mph) miles of range per hour!
And I dare say that is a positive estimate ;-)

But it is doable
For the leaf you needed a virtual ground plug adapter with the eu2000, don't need that on the rav4
 
I run mine of propane, no need to use aging gasoline. I use an evseupgrade with the special request modification for generators as you can't gorund a genset for portable use and the evse would otherwise fault.
 
The Clipper Creek/ Delphi stage 1 charger will pull about 1.37 kw from the generator. You will have to start charging with the honda in regular mode for a minute or two before switching the generator to "eco" mode. You will also need to tie the neutral to the ground terminal on the receptacle to get the Clipper Creek/Delphi to cooperate, as without ground to neutral, it will indicate a power fault. I got about 6 hours of run time for about 35 miles added one night in my e-Golf, in the Eastern Sierra's, before the Honda ran out of gas, enough to get me to Boulder Creek RV campground near Lone Pine for a proper 14-50 plug to run the juice box 40 off of for a full recharge.

20151020_093410_zpshqi7wjqe.jpg
 
smkettner said:
So is that 35 MPG?
If you keep your speed at 60 mph in an e-Golf with no head wind and about 700 foot of elevation gain, yes. Moved the Tent-Kot and sleeping bag away from the Honda and started it up and went to bed two hours later, and checked, saw it had added 12 miles in that time. Sometime during the night it ran out of fuel and I had 35 more miles range added to the car. I get about 5.5 miles per kwh showing on the e-Golf, the RAV is probably getting less miles per kwh due to frontal area and weight.
 
JoulesThief said:
smkettner said:
So is that 35 MPG?
If you keep your speed at 60 mph in an e-Golf with no head wind and about 700 foot of elevation gain, yes. Moved the Tent-Kot and sleeping bag away from the Honda and started it up and went to bed two hours later, and checked, saw it had added 12 miles in that time. Sometime during the night it ran out of fuel and I had 35 more miles range added to the car. I get about 5.5 miles per kwh showing on the e-Golf, the RAV is probably getting less miles per kwh due to frontal area and weight.


Yes, 200 miles plus range in the RAV would be nice at 60.
 
TonyWilliams said:
4EVEREV said:
Yes, 200 miles plus range in the RAV would be nice at 60.

We're getting closer.. Lots of wrecked Tesla cars with 7104 quantity of 3100-3400ma cells.

What are the ma ratings of the Panasonic or LG cells in the e-Golf, I wonder. 18650's, I assume?

I've no idea how many e-Golfs have wrecked already, only 3151 sold so far, through October, 596 sold in October 2015 alone.

Did the RAV 4 get the Tesla S-40 battery packs in it's design?
 
JoulesThief said:
TonyWilliams said:
4EVEREV said:
Yes, 200 miles plus range in the RAV would be nice at 60.

We're getting closer.. Lots of wrecked Tesla cars with 7104 quantity of 3100-3400ma cells.

What are the ma ratings of the Panasonic or LG cells in the e-Golf, I wonder. 18650's, I assume?

I've no idea how many e-Golfs have wrecked already, only 3151 sold so far, through October, 596 sold in October 2015 alone.

Did the RAV 4 get the Tesla S-40 battery packs in it's design?
The Panasonic cells in the e-Golf are prismatic cells, not cylinder cells like 18650's. The RAV4 EV has a unique pack design.
 
TonyWilliams said:
4EVEREV said:
Yes, 200 miles plus range in the RAV would be nice at 60.

We're getting closer.. Lots of wrecked Tesla cars with 7104 quantity of 3100-3400ma cells.
Tony:

When you have the RAV4 upgrade package ready, give me a call. My wife has been after me to get her a Tesla :? . This way I can say that my Rav is even MORE Tesla than before! :lol:

Mike

ps. I am serious about the upgrade as I am sure many of us are. I will gladly drive down to San Diego to have you do the install.
 
There's two ways to do a battery augmentation:

1) add a pack behind the rear axle that is connected in parallel.

2) upgrade the current cells

We could do option 1 today. Nothing but $$$$ stopping us.

How much do you want to spend?
 
Option 1 sounds comkplex as you would have to connect your piggy-back pack to the Battery Maintenance System (or whatever it is called).

Option 2 sounds more do-able, especially if you have a supply of Tesla cast-off cells :roll:

Make me an offer for Option 2. Sounds like the "Godfather": Make him an offer he can't refuse. :twisted:

What sort of range increase are we talking about?
 
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