Service manual

17
RAV4-EV PHEV-100 / Range Extender Notes
We’ve empirically determined that the RAV4-EV doesn’t mind receiving energy from the PFC-50 while the car is in
motion, including during regenerative breaking and when the “EB” mode is selected for coasting regeneration. If you
have a powerful enough generator and you’re willing to limit your highway speed to between 55 and 60MPH, the
RAV4-EV may be driven continuously between gasoline refills.
Our current favorite generator is the Coleman Professional 11000, a CARB-certified unit with a Honda engine. We’ve
determined that driving our RAVs in highway conditions with this Coleman unit attached gives us approximately 27
miles per gallon of gasoline consumed without using power from the traction battery. If driving speeds don’t exceed 55
to 60mph, then the RAV may be driven continuously for the approximately three-hour endurance of the generator at
11kw rated continuous load.
Our design objective in experimenting with the PHEV/range extension configuration was not to take a perfectly
wonderful battery electric vehicle and make it a gas guzzling mini-SUV. The world has enough of those already! Instead,
we wanted to design a novel assemblage of commercially available parts to create a portable platform that will
normally reside in an owner’s garage, and be attached to the RAV4-EV only when trips exceeding the normal 100-mile
operating range need to be undertaken, for example, when a New Jersey family wants to take their EV to Florida for
the winter or use it for summer vacation travel. We certainly don’t advocate routine driving with a generator attached!
The pictures below show the first of two revisions of a platform we built to test the idea of using an off-the-shelf
generator with the PFC-50 while the RAV4-EV was in motion. The first platform attaches to either the front or rear of
the vehicle and was made very large by design so that several different generators and mounting configurations could
be tried. The second platform, a much improved, lighter, and more compact version, is custom welded for the Coleman
11000 and is much smaller.
In closing, we note that the idea of a PHEV/range extender for the RAV4-EV is not new. See
http://evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm for a more elegant implementation that allows continuous driving at speeds in
excess of 70MPH.