Yes! EVs still have a smaller ordinary car battery in them. It charges from the main battery in the same way in a ICE car it will charge from the alternator. If the main battery is dead, or just for some reason not charging the small battery, it can effectively act exactly as if an ICE car has a dead battery.
Fun fact, you can also use that fact to use existing car battery to mains power gadgets in the case of a home power outage without the more complex dedicated reverse-charging that only some cars (and chargers) support, but without running an ICE in/outside your house for hours.
Really? Setting up a pure sine wave inverter 48VDC to 115VAC/60Hz (or 220VAC/50Hz) is all one would need to do to supply single-phase mains to a home via EV? I guess it could depend a lot on the rated current capacity of the circuitry between the EV’s Li-Ion main bank and the 48VDC secondary battery.
1kW ain’t too bad for a short emergency. I was bummed when I found out the Greenworks 80V inverter maxed out at only 300W, since I had a nice collection of 80V yard equipment batteries.
Yes! EVs still have a smaller ordinary car battery in them. It charges from the main battery in the same way in a ICE car it will charge from the alternator. If the main battery is dead, or just for some reason not charging the small battery, it can effectively act exactly as if an ICE car has a dead battery.
Fun fact, you can also use that fact to use existing car battery to mains power gadgets in the case of a home power outage without the more complex dedicated reverse-charging that only some cars (and chargers) support, but without running an ICE in/outside your house for hours.
Really? Setting up a pure sine wave inverter 48VDC to 115VAC/60Hz (or 220VAC/50Hz) is all one would need to do to supply single-phase mains to a home via EV? I guess it could depend a lot on the rated current capacity of the circuitry between the EV’s Li-Ion main bank and the 48VDC secondary battery.
As an example, https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/old-bolt-new-tricks-making-an-ev-into-a-backup-power-station-with-an-inverter/
12vdc for a Chevy bolt, with the caveat that it maxes at 1500w so only use a 1000w inverter.
It’s not a great way to do it, but it does work.
1kW ain’t too bad for a short emergency. I was bummed when I found out the Greenworks 80V inverter maxed out at only 300W, since I had a nice collection of 80V yard equipment batteries.
Well, when you know you’re sitting on ~60kw of battery, it’s a bummer. The reverse feed system some cars have is promising though.
That blows, they’ve got 500w inverters for the 24v & 40v batteries, but only 300w for the 80v
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