Offboard hybridization

I think Chrysler and others have done related concept vehicles - where different components are hooked together. Like turning your small commuter into a passenger van etc.

I suspect there are a lot of reasons why we don't see the kind of innovation you're suggesting. Safety regs being one of them. Why try something radically different if it opens you up to risks your competitors aren't taking? In a climate where one or a dozen idiots, a frenzied media, and 'maybe' a coupla sticking accelerator pedals can almost bankrupt Toyota? I mean, we now have to have cars with collision avoidance and back-up cameras. Imagine the average person trying to regularly and SAFELY hook up to and drive with a trailer - particularly one that may have huge amounts of battery energy stored on board. And where do you park this thing when not being used? I bet there are terabytes of cool ideas from automotive engineers that are shelved because cars have to be built to easily and safely be operated by folks that have the mental capacity of a distracted 3rd grader.

It's been tried before. This guy:

a cool one from scratch.Others have tried it as well, and the consensus of those I am aware ofis that the frictional and aero losses of the trailer offsets theexpected gains. Same goes for mounting a large generator on a trailer to run an ev. HTH Ben

i think the biggest issue is the practically of an articulated vehicle. nobody would want to see my grandmother try to parallel park anything with a trailer, let alone back it out of a driveway.

Built in palo alto as expected

The vehicle propelled looks like porsche boxter, I did not know porsche made any EVs :-)

There are issues with having a trailer provide driving force. It plays with the handling balance of the car if you start to get to meaningful levels of thrust.

Toyota actually had an EV RAV-4 for fleet use about a decade ago. It had a generator trailer that worked pretty well, but it wasn't a pusher. It was just a generator with cables that ran to the RAV-4.

Trailers are not zero load as far as rolling resistance, aero load, or weight.

I don't think a subaru should ever be hooked up to a horse trailer. Even if it had its own power. The car just has too little weight and wheelbase to handle a trailer with that much mass. a Trailer capacble of handing 600 kilos of horse, with electric motors and batteries likely weighs nearly 2000 kilos completely loaded. You're not going to catch me driving a car on 16 inch wheels with 205 or 225 series tires sheparding along a trailer that weighs as much as, or more than the car.

Bill

you've been brainwashed.

i have personally towed a [hydraulic braked] twin axle three horse trailer, load: one ornery 200lb pig and several full size straw bales, with an 1100cc fwd car. the steepest grade was about 25% and we took in

1st gear, but it made it. and the vehicle handling was better than a traditional truck because its independent rear suspension was not subject to yaw like leaf springs are*.

sure, a more powerful vehicle would have been nice to have, and certainly a good deal faster up hill, but our culturally ingrained fear and trepidation about needing 5+ liters of v8 to tow a Trailer capacble

• "duallies" are a ridiculous concept. tires don't improve yaw stability, suspension does. as long as detroit keeps churning out trucks with leaf spring rears, we're always going to have towing yaw stability problems.

I have no doubt that you were able to tow a big trailer with a small car.. I have done it dozens of times myself. But to say that the handling was better than a truck is absurd beyond belief. Ben

simple leaf spring suspensions yaw - that's one of the fundamental weaknesses of that configuration. multi-link suspension simply doesn't, so it makes for a much more stable towing platform. i call that stability "better handling", but you might have a different word for it.

I'd carry a load with leaf springs over coil or independent ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.

well, leaf springs have the advantage of being dirt cheap and dirt cheap to make progressive. and for the average american "truck", that never gets loaded much more than grocery shopping and never tows and somehow doesn't have to conform to any rollover safety testing or handling standards, they sure are a great solution for the manufacturer.

but if you've ever driven [off road] in anything that has a real rear end, like the hummer or even some of the wacky euro stuff, you'd be singing a different song.

don't get me wrong - i have a leaf reared truck. i kind of like it. and i like that it handles static loads easily. but its dynamic load handling is just abysmal relative to any of the above. absolutely abysmal.

and don't get me started on ground clearance.

You lowered it? I somehow doubt it has less than 4" on my A4.

With the two axles the extra load on the rear of the car should be minimal if at all present. No? If so then the (rear) tire load handling capacity should be irrelevant.

You're right all my engineering professors brainwashed me into thinking that it's not a good idea to use the wrong tool for the job. You might have successfully used an 1100 cc car to pull a trailer much larger than the car itself, but you were confined to using first gear. The fact that you then go into a discussion fo dynamic handling is ironic since your system had just barely crossed the line from static to dynamic.

There are many jobs that can be done with non-ideal tools, but it either makes it harder or unsafe. I think that using a subaru to tow a trailer at highway speeds that large is unsafe. Possible to do, but unsafe.

How did that 'un-absurd' what you said?

The only time I ever experienced yaw in all the towing I've done is when I towed a full size bronco on a 1500 pound trailer with a 1990 S-10... an 8500 pound load with a vehicle designed to tow 1500 pounds The fact is that the yaw issue you spoke of is non existent when you tow a within design limits. Cheers, Ben

One thing neglected in many towing capacity discussions is braking effectiveness and control. Ever had a deer jump in front of you while towing?

I'd have to venture a guess a single axle trailer with the front load bias would have an edge in that scenario because it will help to add weight to the rear axle of the car during brake dive (of the trailer)

On the other hand in emergency braking a single axle trailer say, loaded with 2000lbs worth of cargo could easily outstrip the claimed tire load capacity resulting in the rear tires blowing up. That's entirely depend on how overengineered a given tire is in a given size.

Thumper, did you have a deer jump in front of you while towing and want to shed some specifics on the subject?

with respect, simply reducing load does not remove the fundamental design issue with leaf springs - there is no lateral triangulation and thus no lateral rigidity. simply reducing load just makes the problem smaller, it doesn't make it go away.

by way of contrast, we've managed to [slowly] pull our heads out of the sand on engine technology - we no longer have manual ignition timing controls on our steering wheels for example. we need to pull ourselves out of the 19th century and abandon what is in reality horse-cart suspension for our motorized carriages. unless we want to continue to drive at horse-cart speeds and with horse-cart loads.

no. and i didn't decide to demonstrate my low i.q. either.

you need to travel the world and see other designs up close my friend. and so do your engineering professors if what you say is actually true.

even if you don't care to travel, you could borrow a non-usa automotive design book from a library and glimpse how the rest of the world managed to figure this stuff out without the help of our esteemed education system,

the "bosch automotive handbook" is a simplistic, but good place to start.

"to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail".