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Battery to charge the battery

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M1tch

2021 M3P with EAP
Nov 16, 2021
916
827
Gloucester, England
Don’t really know what to call for what I’m looking for, but my company (the MOD) have banned charging electric cars off service means. Terrible decision on my opinion. However, many barracks are in isolated locations - like I am - so wondered is there a battery / power pack that exists? Similar to a power pack for a phone etc but a big one for a car? My theory is I’d charge that, than charge the car off that. Repeat all week, then drive home on a Friday night…..
 
Don’t really know what to call for what I’m looking for, but my company (the MOD) have banned charging electric cars off service means. Terrible decision on my opinion. However, many barracks are in isolated locations - like I am - so wondered is there a battery / power pack that exists? Similar to a power pack for a phone etc but a big one for a car? My theory is I’d charge that, than charge the car off that. Repeat all week, then drive home on a Friday night…..
How would you get this massive portable battery to and from your property to the car? 🤣
 
Companies like Jackery do "portable power stations", but I'm not sure about the practicality for you. The biggest one Jackery do is 1000Wh and takes 7 hours to charge off AC (or 8 off solar) and then gives you a standard 3-pin socket you could use with the granny charger, but I assume it would take roughly the same amount of time again to charge the car for about 4 miles of range in 16 hours.

I can't believe that battery would last very long with a hard life like that either.

It's not terribly ecological, but a portable diesel generator may well be more practical if you would be allowed to run that, or consider powering off the car when you park up so there's no vampire drain during the week.
 
As the MOD, like all UK Govt sectors, has a goal to become net zero, and a strategy to get there, why are they stopping private car charging on base?


Surely they should be encouraging it. If they’re worried about 3rd party chargers on base, they should be building charging infrastructure in adjacent land (or living the fence a few feet).

It’s not rocket science.
 
Unfortunately anything small enough to go in the boot isn't going to give you anything more than a few miles. There are some devices that in an ememrgency might get you 10 miles to the nearest charger, but I suspect nothing meaningful to increase your range.
 
The battery is the most expensive part of the car, so it wouldn’t be cheap or small to give you an external one with a usable capacity.

For example, a powerwall (not suitable for your scenario) is 13.5kwh, and costs several thousand when you can get them. This would give you <20% charge. It also weighs 120kg.

Jackery do a 2kwh battery, that costs $2k, but again would only give you around 2% charge.

You may be better looking at Map of charging points for electric car drivers in UK: Zap-Map to see where the nearest (?home) chargers are that are open.
 
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As the MOD, like all UK Govt sectors, has a goal to become net zero, and a strategy to get there, why are they stopping private car charging on base?
If you ever worked for the MOD you’d find out what a bunch of reactionary morons they can be. They do sometimes make bafflingly stupid decisions, many times out of ignorance, many times out of laziness. Change is hard.
Makes you wonder sometimes who managed to persuade them to use these newfangled lightbulbs when candles worked perfectly fine for the last 400 years….

They’ll change their minds. Eventually.
 
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As the MOD, like all UK Govt sectors, has a goal to become net zero, and a strategy to get there, why are they stopping private car charging on base?


Surely they should be encouraging it. If they’re worried about 3rd party chargers on base, they should be building charging infrastructure in adjacent land (or living the fence a few feet).

It’s not rocket science.
They can even get decent grants to install charge points.
 
Don’t really know what to call for what I’m looking for, but my company (the MOD) have banned charging electric cars off service means. Terrible decision on my opinion. However, many barracks are in isolated locations - like I am - so wondered is there a battery / power pack that exists? Similar to a power pack for a phone etc but a big one for a car? My theory is I’d charge that, than charge the car off that. Repeat all week, then drive home on a Friday night…..
It does seem a crazy black/white decision. You can imagine restrictions where the supply is not up to higher rates but you could turn the amps down to less than a kettle ... and from what I read most military situations are sustained by constant cups of tea so they obviously cope with that very well! (OR is it just a cost thing? If so you could offer to pay the going rate.)

I suspect that some bright spark has decided that a measure of "greenness" will be the reduction in energy use at the bases ... least electricity used being one of their key measures ... so they'll instead encourage everyone to have fossil fuel vehicles lined up outside.