"John Anderton" wrote in message
oups.com...

Bob Eager wrote:
On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 09:41:40 UTC, "Doctor Drivel"
wrote:

"Grimly Curmudgeon" wrote in message
...
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel"

saying something like:

If you flatten the battery and have no fuel, all it needs is a tow
for 1/2
mile or so and the wheels turning will charge the battery, they you
get
home.

Really? Creates energy does it?

Yep.

At 100% energy efficiency, enough to get you half a mile? So, you're
saying you only need to be towed *half* the way home...

I'm sorry to say I've been really, really bored today and I've actually
spent time thinking about this. :-)

Although I don't doubt that towing a standard electric car half a mile
will enable it, at best, to then go about half a mile under it's own
power, it *is* actually possible, in theory, to impart enough energy to
an electric vehicle in that distance to enable it to travel many miles.

Yep. They also use large capacitors to store energy.

To achieve this you either have to tow the car using a vehicle with a
far more powerful engine or tow the car using a vehicle with a
comparable engine but slowly. You also need a dynamo in the electric
car that creates many times the resistance suffered by the car when it
is running normally (caused by wind resistance, friction etc.) and
tyres that enable the dynamo to turn without the car losing traction on
the road.

Cheers,

John