The bigger the coil, the more efficient it can be (and the wider the spacing, the less efficient). I don’t know what they have in mind, but there’s no real upper limit to efficiency; it just depends on the design. Inductive phone chargers aren’t likely to hit peak efficiency since they have so many other constraints, cost being a big one. And they can get away with low efficiency since the waste is so low in absolute terms (a few watts). An inductive car charger will have to be better, just because having kilowatts of waste going to heat isn’t very practical.
It’s possible the idea won’t ever go anywhere–this was just thrown out as an offhand remark–but if it does, it’ll probably just be because they couldn’t drive the cost down enough to be interesting. It’s a somewhat marginal benefit, probably worth a few thousand if it works well, but I doubt many will want to pay $10k or more. We’ll just have to see what they come up with.
My first plow was a truck I had had for years. Stuck a plow on it. It became my dedicated plow truck. I bought my second truck used and bought a plow for it. It is also pretty much dedicated to plowing only. It’s an absolute bitch to put the chains on it. Takes a solid 2 hours to do all 4 tires. I’ve just been leaving them on year round, it never leaves my property.
Typically not air core, but yeah. In principle, an air core transformer can be more efficient than iron core, due to the lack of core losses, but they have lower power capacity. And they tend to be used in places where the air part is a requirement due to the geometry, and end up less efficient than typical for that reason.
There is a Reddit post with a short video showing a Model Y towing a semi trailer. If you don’t feel like clicking through, I’ve attached the money shot picture from the Electrek post about this incident.
This happened in Harlingen, Texas, which (as mentioned in the Reddit comments), is suspiciously close to SpaceX.
I have no doubt that a dual motor Y has the power to get a trailer like that moving. The Y probably has similar horsepower to a big rig, though \frac{1}{3} or less of the torque. Stopping is the major problem. The air brakes in the trailer are almost certainly disabled, which means 10-15,000 pounds pushing on the car, if the trailer is empty.
This is obviously an incredibly stupid thing to do, but I don’t think any stupider than any of the “pickup truck towing semi trailer” articles a brief search brings up.
From a Car and Driver article (though this one looks like he might have the airbrakes hooked up):
Quoting myself from a couple weeks ago for context …
Today I saw an International XT in the wild. First time I’d seen one for real in ~15 years. Parked in somebody’s driveway on a nearby street I’d never had reason to drive down before.
And yes, the other generic cars in this generic 1970s suburban house’s driveway looked like kid toys by comparison. More incongruous than funny, but still funny.
I don’t see the point of silly demos like that. Ford did something similar with the Lightning. Sure the EV has the torque to move the thing, but how far? Maybe a couple of blocks before the Tesla’s battery is completely drained? Does this have any real-world utility whatsoever?
Unfortunately, this was real world utility of towing a trailer with a family car. If it had been a publicity stunt it would have been done on a closed course of some kind.
I’ve not been following this any closer than what comes up in my news feed, so I’ve still not seen any explanation of why it was happening. This article says that the car and trailer were impounded. The article below has some links to videos from the towing company that was called out.
JFC, that’s a full-fledged tractor rig with a pickup bed rather comically welded to it! Does it have any conceivable purpose other than a (fake) super-macho statement of (alleged) virility? All it needs for the perfect finishing touch of lying fakery is a Trump flag.
Ref my post a couple above, which quoted even earlier posts, this product was intended as a big F U! to GM’s Hummer line which was doing very nicely in the gilded age immediately preceding the crash of 2008.
There were a whole lotta working-sorta people with excess money during that debt-fueled construction boom. Most of the original marketing material showed the truck sitting on a construction site while the truck owner was standing there in a nice clean shirt with a clean hard hat and some blueprints spread wide.
The bed is actually real large compared to an e.g. F-150; it just looks vestigial compared to what it’s being carried by. The bed height is just a bit below nipple height on an average man. So not real convenient to load & unload. Nor to climb in and out of.
I think you overestimate the energy-consumption of that trailer. There is just rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag fighting you … aerodynamic drag at city speeds is not really an issue.
assuming level ground, once its up to speed, my guess is 3-5 times the normal consumption (at city-speeds) of the car…
so, under good conditions, 100 miles could be do-able.
again, just spittballing … but I once towed my big-ass CJ6 w/ 33" tires with my trusted Suzuki Samurai for a couple of 100 km… with no issues (well, breaking was a bit of a white-knuckle affair)
of course stop-and-go will do ugly things to the battery…
If you’re interested in these giant pickup truck things, here is a Doug Demuro video of him reviewing one based on a Ford F650. (I believe this is his most popular video.)
And to make sure we stay on topic for a thread about the Cybertruck, here is his review of the Lo Rez car. The Cybertruck is a mashup of the prior video and this:
Nope. But you’re right that an engine hoist would have fit their yard décor to a T.
I should have tried to take a pic from the other direction, but didn’t want to be too obviously invading their privacy. There was a rat-trap 1990s small station wagon parked on the other side of the XT. Which matched the Astro van nicely, and made the size (and condition) contrast with the XT even more impressive.
