Any electric vehicles out there that can be

CoeyCoey wrote:

Airdaile wrote:
Not long ago someone here proposed using a bicycle type generator or a ram air generator to charge the toad battery while being towed. Like everything else, it was generally poo-pooed here.

Although both would work, both would provide constant drag while towing. Having the EV apply regenerative braking when the towing vehicles applies its brakes would generate a lot more energy and only when you want to slow down. And ideally, you could have a manual potentiometer that would allow you to adjust the force of the braking so you aren't using the RV brakes and all, and just the EV's regenerative braking. By doing so, you could get a huge amount of energy in those batteries while slowing down both vehicles. Especially something like a class A. And you are saving the service brakes.

What would be even more amazing is if they make the EV so that it uses wheel power during acceleration and hill climbs to reduce or even eliminate the load on the RV. This way you would not increase the load on the RV at all for better mileage and acceleration, and because the car is in the draft of the RV, it would use far less energy than normal.

Regenerative braking is not something that could just be retrofitted into your current class A and then piped to the batteries of the EV. I guess you could configure the EV braking system to activate and stop the RV, but the brakes on a 2000LB EV isn't going to help stop a 40,000lb diesel pusher very much. On top of that, the whole idea of an RV and towed is to use the RV on the long part of the trip (not much braking) and the towed for the stop and go driving in town. I don't think this concept is going to be a lynch pin of the New Green Deal.