Electric car pulling a caravan

Whilst there may be workarounds on charging which also may improve over time, the biggest barrier must surely be capital outlay. AFAICS one is going to have to shell out around £50K or more for all but the most modest of vehicles.

I can assure you I shelled out nothing like that, CY, and although mine's not a tow car, it’s far from modest😂😂

Yes we can use the regenerative braking etc. The rex only gets used when the mileage reaches a certain level. I can't remember at present what remaining mileage is needed for the rex to come in automatically but we use it occasionally just to keep topped up with battery power on long journeys. We can over ride most of the systems to suit. However we rarely use the rex and the car computer switches it on occasionally just to keep it in running order. It was a good invention I presume the tiny bit of fuel needed didn't fit in with EU green credentials so it was dropped. 

It would have been very useful for towing vehicles.

Thanks. Seems it truly was an extra rather than an instead of.

TW, regen braking is fundamental to almost all EVs. The notable exceptions being E-bikes, E-scooters and golf-carts :-)

The I3 Rex and Vauxhall Ampera had the same system with a decent sized battery allowing for most daily journeys to be undertaken in electric only mode. The major saving over a “regular” PHEV being no gear box or transmission. The engine was designed to run at optimum load to deliver the average power needed for a journey (I.e. cruising power at 55 to 60 mph) rather than accelerating or overtaking power. That made it much smaller than an ICE that had to the same job. The Outlander has a similar system, but adds direct drive of the ICE to the wheels via a single speed gearbox for higher speed cruising only. 

The formula was very successful for those cars (Chevy Volt is the US version of the Ampera).

Thanks, ChocT. So, if I've got this right, the I3 Rex and Ampera were rather like the usual hybrids but with bigger batteries making them predominantly electric with small back up ICE power and with a plug-in facility. Or, you could say they were like PHEVs but with the batteries providing the largest proportion of power.

There's an awful lot to get our heads around and each system has pros and cons.

Their engines only drove a generator to provide electric for the driven wheels, the ICE didn't drive the wheels directly. I liked the idea of them but they seemed short lived

Mmm, strange. You'd have thought if it was an emissions issues then we'd have seen the demise of all forms of hybrid. Perhaps it was production issues/costs🤷‍♂️