I live in the PNW and with the recent "bomb cyclone" we have had widespread power outages. Its been almost 3 days without power and we don't have a generator. We've been able to draw power using our Rivian R1T which is great. I did have to go to a DCFC charger to juice up once but otherwise its an awesome feature and capability of BEVs.
With that in mind, I've been thinking about Scout's Harvester and how great of an option it would be in situations like the one were in. I'd say it would be an even better option than a battery-only BEV. If I had the Traveler this week with the Harvester and had the option to keep my battery charged using the combustion engine, it would have provided a similar experience with regards to powering my home but it would have been way more convenient.
As you know, going from 10-90% in a BEV can take anywhere from 30 min to 1.5 hours, depending on how large your battery is and chargers speeds. That doesn't factor in if the charger up, is it running properly, it is busy. As you can imagine, all the DCFC in the area have been busy so it took me about 2 hours to get my charge complete with the wait time.
Had I had the Traveler with the Harvester, I could have gotten gas in a few min, returned home and continued to power my essentials.
This is assuming that the Harvester works while the vehicle is parked. Another community member mentioned this in their post. It'd be similar to that but it doesn't necessarily need to keep the battery at a fixed SOC, it just needs to be able to charge the battery so that as we discharge it to power the house, the engine keeps charging it. Simply put, you'd want to drain the gasoline more than the battery as its easier/faster to fill up gas than charge the battery. The other similar use case is when camping or overlanding. It'd be great to charge the battery during the day or overnight when parked. Of course there's the issue of the fumes from a stationary vehicle. Its going to be interesting to find out how the Harvester works.
Obviously would be amazing for emergency situations like the one we were in this week but also useful for camping/overlanding and other scenarios where you need to power devices while the vehicle is parked. Also, it'd be great if it provided more than the 1.2kW of power the outlets in the R1T provide. 9.6kW would be nice like the Cybertruck and F-150 Lightning. Also nice would be at least one outlet with 40amp/240v outlet. It'd be useful to be able to charge our other BEV with the Scout.
With that in mind, I've been thinking about Scout's Harvester and how great of an option it would be in situations like the one were in. I'd say it would be an even better option than a battery-only BEV. If I had the Traveler this week with the Harvester and had the option to keep my battery charged using the combustion engine, it would have provided a similar experience with regards to powering my home but it would have been way more convenient.
As you know, going from 10-90% in a BEV can take anywhere from 30 min to 1.5 hours, depending on how large your battery is and chargers speeds. That doesn't factor in if the charger up, is it running properly, it is busy. As you can imagine, all the DCFC in the area have been busy so it took me about 2 hours to get my charge complete with the wait time.
Had I had the Traveler with the Harvester, I could have gotten gas in a few min, returned home and continued to power my essentials.
This is assuming that the Harvester works while the vehicle is parked. Another community member mentioned this in their post. It'd be similar to that but it doesn't necessarily need to keep the battery at a fixed SOC, it just needs to be able to charge the battery so that as we discharge it to power the house, the engine keeps charging it. Simply put, you'd want to drain the gasoline more than the battery as its easier/faster to fill up gas than charge the battery. The other similar use case is when camping or overlanding. It'd be great to charge the battery during the day or overnight when parked. Of course there's the issue of the fumes from a stationary vehicle. Its going to be interesting to find out how the Harvester works.
Obviously would be amazing for emergency situations like the one we were in this week but also useful for camping/overlanding and other scenarios where you need to power devices while the vehicle is parked. Also, it'd be great if it provided more than the 1.2kW of power the outlets in the R1T provide. 9.6kW would be nice like the Cybertruck and F-150 Lightning. Also nice would be at least one outlet with 40amp/240v outlet. It'd be useful to be able to charge our other BEV with the Scout.
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