Some musings on future power trains

Groover wrote:
You have missed many of the advantages that I have listed. The main idea is to simplify the coach and thus reduce cost, reduce weight and increase storage area. Any fuel economy improvement would be icing on the cake. If you go back to my original post you will see I suggested increasing battery capacity to at least 10kwhr, more would be better.

Yes, your V10 is quiet, mine was too. But the coach that I used for reference is diesel powered. Even the QuietDiesel generator by Onan is not nearly as quiet as the V10 or most any other gas engine used to push a vehicle. Most gas gensets are pretty loud too.

And I have tried to make it clear that I need a camper that works without charge ports nearby. With a hybrid built for a motorhome and a larger battery pack you could probably run the generator a lots often but when you do run it put away a lot more Kw for later use. Yes, you would increase wear on the one engine but I have heard very little about people wearing out either engine in their motorhomes. The people that are worried about it are free to stay with the two engine approach.

If nobody actually pulls with a half ton truck Ford sure has wasted a lot of money stepping up their towing game for 2021. The 2021 F150 Ecoboost can be equipped to tow as much as a gas F250, even the one with a Godzilla engine.

But you won't be simplifying or reducing weight if you make a viable plug-in-hybrid. Any savings in motor size will be eaten up by a big battery bank. For example, Tesla's battery bank weighs in at around 1200lb.

A 10kwh battery bank is going to do squat on a 20 mile mountain climb. Maybe add 30-40hp for a 1/2hr, when you need to generate something on the order of 150-200hp to take the load off an undersized diesel and to keep a big MH up to speed. An 80kwh tesla battery bank, will be somewhat more helpful as you could pull 160kw (200hp) for a 1/2 hr. That might be enough to help a downsized 300hp diesel up a mountain. It also would need some heavy duty engineering. Teslas are known to go into limp mode when driven hard for extended periods as parts overheat. It can be done but it's not cheap or simple.

Again, if you want an off grid RV, add a big lithium bank (say 10kwh) and coat the roof with solar panels ( you can probably get around 3000w of solar panels generating about 12kwh per day). It will be cheaper and simper and in most conditions that will allow you to run whatever you want...largely indefinetly. It makes no sense to add the complexity and cost of a hybrid, just to have battery power for house loads.

Sure people tow with 1/2 ton truck but it's typically few miles and lower weight trailers. Tow ratings in 1/2 ton trucks is mostly marketing. There are rare exceptions, but when you get over 8-10k lbs and towing a lot of miles, most people bump up to at least a 3/4 ton because it does so much better. Of course, you can push a 1/2 ton to the limits once in a while and get away with it and some people do but it's so rare Ford can blow it off as being abused when their trucks fail prematurely.