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Charging our Teslas with wind power.

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Wondering why Tesla cars don't have an air intake under the front hood which allows air to flow in to the frunk area (none of my fellow Tesla owners uses the frunk much, if at all) and power one or more small wind turbines which could charge our batteries while we are driving. The air could then flow out under the car. It could be a game changer for increasing range.. Noise cancellation or dampening may be necessary, but should not be a huge problem to solve.
 
Wondering why Tesla cars don't have an air intake under the front hood which allows air to flow in to the frunk area (none of my fellow Tesla owners uses the frunk much, if at all) and power one or more small wind turbines which could charge our batteries while we are driving. The air could then flow out under the car. It could be a game changer for increasing range.. Noise cancellation or dampening may be necessary, but should not be a huge problem to solve.
It actually is a huge problem if you stop and think about the physics involved in what you are suggesting.

What do you suppose this would do to your coefficient of drag?
 
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Wondering why Tesla cars don't have an air intake under the front hood which allows air to flow in to the frunk area (none of my fellow Tesla owners uses the frunk much, if at all) and power one or more small wind turbines which could charge our batteries while we are driving. The air could then flow out under the car. It could be a game changer for increasing range.. Noise cancellation or dampening may be necessary, but should not be a huge problem to solve.
Maybe they could make a perpetual motion car.

The amount of drag you’d add to the car to drive the turbine would require more energy to over come than the turbine could generate.

Unless going down hill.
 
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Probably very little. Presently the air hits the front end of our cars and goes either up over the hood or down under the car. That air would be directed through and under the car. Could even make a slight improvement in the coefficient of drag. The improvement in range could be big--and cheap.
 
Probably very little. Presently the air hits the front end of our cars and goes either up over the hood or down under the car. That air would be directed through and under the car. Could even make a slight improvement in the coefficient of drag. The improvement in range could be big--and cheap.
No, even ignoring the likely increase in drag, the amount of power generated by a couple ~16" diameter fans at 60mph would be miniscule. You could probably measure it in low single digits of wh/mi.

Take for instance your common 16" oscillating desk fan:


That particular fan takes 45 watts. This means that if its on high for a solid hour straight, it'll take 45 watt hours of power to run. Conversely, if you had it being turned by the air, you might get as much as 45wh out of it in that HOUR (Yes, I'm ignoring that the AC motor is probably total crap at producing power, but you can at least get an idea of the scale) That's a maximum output of 0.75 wh per minute, if we assume that everything is 100% efficient and the speed of the air through the ducted passageways is at least that of this fan sitting on a desk being plugged into a wall. You might even get double or triple that if the fan and ducting was designed well. So, lets assume quadruple.... 3wh/mile per fan. Lets put two fans in there, now its 6 wh/mi at 60mph. Hardly a game changer for a car consuming 254 wh/min.

On the flipside, now we need to carry the weight of the fans/generators, probably the weight of the duct-blocking assembly(since a fan designed for 60mph will probably downright explode at 145mph), the monstrous horribly inefficient DC-DC adapter getting 30 volts up to 400 volts, and you've lost every bit of frunk space... for MAYBE 2% more range.
 
No, even ignoring the likely increase in drag, the amount of power generated by a couple ~16" diameter fans at 60mph would be miniscule. You could probably measure it in low single digits of wh/mi.

Take for instance your common 16" oscillating desk fan:


That particular fan takes 45 watts. This means that if its on high for a solid hour straight, it'll take 45 watt hours of power to run. Conversely, if you had it being turned by the air, you might get as much as 45wh out of it in that HOUR (Yes, I'm ignoring that the AC motor is probably total crap at producing power, but you can at least get an idea of the scale) That's a maximum output of 0.75 wh per minute, if we assume that everything is 100% efficient and the speed of the air through the ducted passageways is at least that of this fan sitting on a desk being plugged into a wall. You might even get double or triple that if the fan and ducting was designed well. So, lets assume quadruple.... 3wh/mile per fan. Lets put two fans in there, now its 6 wh/mi at 60mph. Hardly a game changer for a car consuming 254 wh/min.

On the flipside, now we need to carry the weight of the fans/generators, probably the weight of the duct-blocking assembly(since a fan designed for 60mph will probably downright explode at 145mph), the monstrous horribly inefficient DC-DC adapter getting 30 volts up to 400 volts, and you've lost every bit of frunk space... for MAYBE 2% more range.
Hello ! You wont get any more range. You will lose range.

The weight, the drag, the inefficiencies will FAR exceed what it generates.

See hypothetical Perpetual Motion Machine


This is as dumb a suggestion as this

 
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It's so easy to forget the laws of physics, conservation of energy etc. Some people have gone to great lengths to prove that the generator attached to the wheel will never work... Air isn't "attached" to the car like a generator so again, it's easy to think that it's free. It's just not, any device that is attached to the car and does work from air pushing on it will exert an opposite reaction which will slow the car. Then whatever energy you can gather through there, there will be losses as you bring that back into the battery. You cannot "create" energy, what you take you give back, plus there are losses normally in heat. It's always a net loss...
 
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Wondering why Tesla cars don't have an air intake under the front hood which allows air to flow in to the frunk area (none of my fellow Tesla owners uses the frunk much, if at all) and power one or more small wind turbines which could charge our batteries while we are driving. The air could then flow out under the car. It could be a game changer for increasing range.. Noise cancellation or dampening may be necessary, but should not be a huge problem to solve.
There are a few educational videos that explain why your idea is not possible by how physics works. Take a look, the two hosts are knowledgeable and eloquent, and their results are shown and explained.

1. This one explains and demonstrates how adding an alternator to an EV (a wind turbine is another form of alternator) will cause more energy loss than it gains you

2. This one addresses and experiments in the real world with the idea (same as yours) that perhaps the turbine will have less drag than the front end of his pickup truck, and this allow some recovery of energy from the wind. But that is also not possible.
 
Wondering why Tesla cars don't have an air intake under the front hood which allows air to flow in to the frunk area and power one or more small wind turbines which could charge our batteries while we are driving.

Like a RAT?

Better still would be to always drive with the brakes slightly on as you'd get continual regen back into the battery!

Is anyone going to mention the conveyor belt? . . .