- [Daniel ] Think it's a good idea?
- No.
(siren wailing)
- Here comes the cops.
It's going in.
Welcome to a very interesting video
that I think is going to provide a solution
to a problem to all of you that drive a Tesla,
and worry about that last couple of miles.
If you run out of fuel and you need to go charge somewhere,
what do you do?
Your whole life you've seen people in a gas powered car
when they run out of gas on the freeway or something,
they get out of their car,
they walk to a gas station,
they buy a gas can just enough to get 'em somewhere
to fill up with gas fully,
or to get off the freeway.
Today I'm hoping to find that solution,
somewhat, with an electric vehicle.
(upbeat music)
So last weekend I took a road trip.
And my car died with .4 miles left to go.
- You could see the charging station.
- Yes.
Before the supercharger.
Battery power too low.
Charge battery.
Zero miles left.
I'm on the side of the freeway.
The charging station is .4 miles away.
Right there.
Turned out to be really big hassle to get that .4 miles.
I had to pay $125 for a tow truck.
The tow guys didn't know anything about a Tesla.
I had to sit on top of the tow truck
with my foot slammed onto the brake.
When he would stop my car would roll forward,
and when he would go my car would roll back,
and I would have to slam it with both feet on my brake.
It was a mess.
Today I came up with a possible solution
for that last little stretch of road.
We just ran our Tesla dead.
It still has enough battery power
so that it can run some of the functions,
but the car is dead.
So this time I played it a little bit safer.
Supercharging station is right there.
So if my little test here does not work,
then we can put the car in neutral or in tow mode,
and we can roll it or push it into the supercharger
and get it fully charged.
This is the Anker Powerhouse.
It's a giant battery pack that I bought off of Amazon.
I hope that it'll be a solution,
I think there are probably a lot of different battery packs
that are big enough to do this.
I chose this one,
we'll give it a shot and see if it works.
This thing has 434 watt hours of energy.
That should be enough to get you
like three or four miles range.
It has a bunch of different sockets,
a 12 volt,
four fast-charging USB ports.
What's crazy is it says on the back
that this is used for,
like if you're traveling,
like a mini fridge, a laptop,
a phone, a camping light.
Like, a mini fridge.
You can charge that with this.
All right but.
- [Lincoln] There's a cool car.
- [Daniel] We needed some help here,
so we called our friend Ben.
- What's up?
I got your battery here.
- (laughs) Look at this.
So we reached out to our friend, Ben, from Teslanomics,
because we have this crazy idea with this battery pack.
But in order for the battery pack to work,
you have to be able to plug it in
with the right type of outlet,
what is it 110 volt outlet?
- 110 volt, 10 amps hopefully.
- 110 volt, okay.
So I only have it for the 240 that we plug it in our garage.
This is the adaptor, huh?
- Yeah, well, for yours,
you want a different one.
But this is the Model 3 one,
this is the new one.
So you plug that guy in there.
- [Daniel] Oh.
- Yeah.
Here's the old school one.
That's like for yours. - [Daniel] Okay.
So this is the one that I'm used to seeing.
- Yeah.
- [Daniel] It's the older version.
Okay, so it does have a little outlet that you can plug in.
So based off of the specifications,
and it has the right outlet on here,
what are your thoughts, Ben?
Is this, is a Tesla going to read this,
actually take the energy from it,
and is it gonna be enough to even get a mile worth?
- So, we looked at this before,
435 watt hours, right?
Which should be enough for a couple miles,
given that you'll be able to,
let's say there's some charging efficiency loss, like.
I think you'll get a least a mile or two out of it, yeah.
- With this gas can,
you're gonna get a lot more than a mile.
You're probably gonna get like what,
25 miles or something?
This isn't gonna fully replace it,
but if it does work,
it could be the thing that gives you
enough juice to get off the road to safety.
- It may have a challenge,
because in terms of charging,
it needs to pull a constant amount of amps and everything.
And so it may not be able to do that.
That would be the hitch in it, I think,
that could mess it up, but.
- All right.
Only one way to find out.
Let's test this thing.
So, here we go.
I'm gonna stick this in here. (grunts)
Just to confirm,
like I'm not even gonna cut this footage right now, look.
We're at battery power very low.
Where it won't even,
oh, we're at zero miles,
you can see it right on there.
Okay, here we go.
All right, Ben.
- Drum roll, please.
Drum roll.
(drum roll) - [Daniel] It's going in.
Moment of truth.
Oh no, it's red.
- [Lincoln] No it's red.
- [Ben] Ooh.
- Charge cable fault.
- [Daniel] It's red on me.
- Ooh.
Charge current 72 amps hold on.
Let's take this thing down to 10.
- [Daniel] It's, I mean, it's in right now,
but let me try it again, okay.
It should accept,
it should read it and adjust it.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- [Daniel] Red.
- Oooh.
Charge cable fault.
Bummer.
- [Daniel] Do you want to grab your cable?
- Yeah, let's try the other cable.
- We're gonna grab Ben's Model 3 charging cable.
That's like the newer updated version,
and see if that gives us better results.
I hope so,
because you drove all the way from San Diego for this test.
- (laughs) It's all good.
- [Daniel] And it might be a fail.
- I think, I think it's gonna work this time.
- [Daniel] Okay.
- [Ben] All right come get 'em.
- [Daniel] You optimistic too?
- No.
- [Daniel] All right, so you plugged it in.
- [Ben] Right, so this thing is.
- [Daniel] It says, it is on, hold on?
- [Ben] It says 100%.
If it goes green you're good.
- [Daniel] Okay, we're not red.
- [Ben] Nope, try it again.
(car beeping)
- [Daniel] Blue.
Blue, it's blue, it's blue.
Turn green, turn green, turn green.
(both yelling) Oh no!
(Ben laughing) - I'll never give up.
- [Daniel] Experiment's a fail.
- [Ben] Ooh.
- [Daniel] Charging cable fault.
- Never seen inside of a Model 3 before.
- [Daniel] You never have?
- Never been up close to one.
- [Daniel] What do you think?
- I like the iPad.
A lot.
- [Daniel] The iPad is it cool.
- Yeah. - [Daniel] Yeah, it's cool.
- [Lincoln] And the wood.
- [Daniel] All right, so, I would say this is
probably more like a lamp than my Model X.
So let's see if it works in it.
(laughing)
- Oh, man.
- [Daniel] Jokes.
- Okay. - [Daniel] It's a good car.
- Let's see.
If it goes green.
If it's on even.
- [Lincoln] Go green.
- [Daniel] Red, red, red, red.
- Oooh, fail, wait.
- [Daniel] Yeah, we tried it again, oh,
did you turn it on?
- Yeah.
- [Daniel] It's not working. - [Ben] Red, it's red.
- [Daniel] Red. - Yep.
No dice, no dice.
- [Daniel] Yeah, Model 3's the same.
- Yep.
Maybe we could charge like a Chevy Volt with it,
or something.
- [Daniel] Yeah, there's one over there,
I bet that would work. - (laughs) Let's go try it.
- [Daniel] That definitely is more like a lamp.
- (laughs) Yes. (Daniel laughs)
- I'm sad.
I wish it would've worked.
But, just need a bigger battery and Tesla to accept it.
- So you guys know I love electric vehicles,
whether it's Tesla or Porsche,
or any other company that's coming out with electric cars.
I support that.
But, I can't be such a Homer for electric vehicles
and not realize,
and not point out
that gas cars win when it comes to the gas can.
There's really not a solution for the Tesla.
- And there won't be, either,
because the energy density that you can get out of gasoline
is just unparallel in the kind of electric space.
I mean, there's so many things that in the future
they're, you know, labs promising new battery tech,
but it's really not here.
And none of these cars are gonna be able to do that.
- So there you go, gas powered cars.
You win.
Go for auto manufacturers that wanna see Tesla
not make it and not survive,
you can point out the fact that in an emergency,
you can get out of it with a gas car,
which you can't do with electric car.
But guys, let us know in the comments.
I'm sure if there is something that exists
that can help us with this rarely needed problem,
but it's something that I wanna find a solution for.
Let us know in the comments if there's anything.
'Cause I haven't been able to find a battery pack
that's strong enough.
And I'm not sure if Tesla supports
battery packs anyway charging,
just because of the way that the energy is not consistent.
So. (inhales sharply)
- Yeah.
- I don't know.
- Yeah, I think it will be a solution maybe down the road.
But right now the technology,
even if you have the lithium ion cells,
the same ones that are in the Tesla,
you're gonna have to have a lot of 'em
to try to compete with something like that.
- Yeah.
All right.
Well, this was a good experiment even though it failed.
Yeah.
But. - Back to the drawing board.
- Back to the drawing board.
All right, Ben.
Thank you for driving all the way up.
Check out Ben's channel, Teslanomics.
He takes the data and turns it into usable information,
so that you can be smarter about your Tesla driving.
- I like that.
I like how you said that.
I'm gonna use that. (laughter)