- Zero miles left, I'm on the side of the freeway.
The charging station is .4 miles away.
This thing cost around $1,600 just for the battery pack.
I've never seen it done before, so we're gonna test it out.
If you remember a few months ago, we did a video
that was a gas can for a Tesla.
This is the Anker Powerhouse.
I'm gonna stick this in here.
It's goin' in, oh no!
Charging cable fault.
Gas cars win when it comes to the gas can.
Why isn't there such a thing?
Well, thanks to you guys, you gave me
lots and lots of comments, get a bigger battery pack,
better than that little Anker one
that I had before to see if that will work.
We needed the cable to be grounded
and that was one of the issues of why it wouldn't work.
So, I'm gonna fix those two things
and attempt it to see if it will work.
I've got this Goal Zero Yeti 1400 Lithium.
This thing will charge off of the sun
and then you can take that charge
and hopefully plug it into your Tesla.
(electronic beeping)
I've never seen it done before, so we're gonna test it out.
Hopefully this will be the backup generator that we need
because we have a Tesla Roadster, we have two Model Xs,
we're a fully electric family and you can't just go
to the gas station when there's an emergency.
If it does work, we're gonna see how many miles
we can actually get with this thing.
(upbeat electronic music)
It's super heavy, this is about 50 pounds.
This better work, 21% charged.
Let's fill 'er up a little bit more.
I wanna get this to 100% and then as far as grounding
the outlet, I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do for that.
All right, she is charging.
It took about 15 hours to get it from 21% up to 100%
plugged into a regular outlet, so this thing has
quite a bit of batteries inside of it.
This is the component that I think
is gonna make everything work.
Let's go outside, get this setup
and I'll show you why I have this.
Oh, that's heavy.
Okay, first things first, we need to change this out.
This is like your regular outlet,
this charges really slow, if we plugged it into the wall,
it'll charge it, it'll just take
overnight or a day to charge.
The last time, you guys helped us out in the comments
and told us what the problem really was.
This little tiny metal part right here was not grounded.
There's a hole for it in here,
but there's no metal in there, there's nothing.
So I paid an electrician to come over
and he made me this little contraption
and supposedly this is going to get us around it.
Inside of this box is something that's grounded,
so hopefully it'll trick the Tesla into thinking
it has the right connection so then it will take the charge.
And if this doesn't work, then it's not the grounding issue,
it's the Tesla software not allowing a variable charge
coming from a battery pack versus the consistent speed
that comes from the wall.
Plug this in, now we've got our little box.
Next step is going to be plug in this guy
into our little contraption.
We need a, well let's see, as soon as you push the button,
it'll start charging, let's try it.
Let's see if it'll work.
Watch this, this'll light up green
if it does have power to it.
Oh, we've got green on this, okay, so this is working.
Now the question is, will the car software accept it?
I'm gonna turn off the light first.
Okay, so Leslie is filming right now.
194 miles charge, we're gonna see
the exact moment, hopefully, that this works.
If I come over here and push the button,
what does the Tesla do?
Okay it senses energy's coming.
Oh, it just turned green!
This is green, this is green and it's pulsating,
that usually means that it's working.
Does it say it's charging in here?
- Yes. - Look at that!
It is charging, two miles per hour, 12 amps.
That's gonna take a lot of hours to charge,
but maybe this is the solution.
This is a solution, but the trick is going to be
this little grounding device that we have.
This battery would fit inside of the frunk.
It's a bit heavy, it's about 50 pounds.
1372 watts, we have tricked the Tesla
into charging off of a portable battery pack.
It is possible to have a gas can solution.
I'm really curious now to see how many mile we can get
of off this Yeti 1400, I know they make bigger ones
than this, but I'm just gonna let this thing run,
see how long it takes and how many miles
we can actually get.
I'm pumped, we found the solution, maybe, kind of.
And as a little bit of a disclaimer here,
I'm not an electrician, so maybe if you're gonna try this,
talk to somebody that's like an automotive expert
before you try it out on your car and potentially damage it.
I don't know if it does anything negative to your car.
I'm taking the chance because I'm super curious
and I wanted to see if this would work
and you guys gave me great suggestions,
but talk to an expert.
Okay, a little update for ya.
This says 195, we have gained one mile of charge.
How much have we lost in energy on this giant battery pack
that took me all night to charge?
Check this out, you're not gonna believe this.
It is currently at 77%.
We have lost 23% of our charge
to get one mile of energy gained on the Tesla, wow!
It is dropping fast too, like look at that.
We just dropped to 76 as we are sitting here.
I don't think it's gonna take any more
than an hour and a half and we'll know,
this thing will be at zero and we'll see
how many miles this Tesla actually gained.
Well, we got down to 46% and now if you look and see,
it is dying, it is done.
We still have only gained one mile of charge.
It's only been about 45 minutes here.
I wonder why it stopped, what's that?
Oh, the light is red over here.
The air is blowing out really hard.
I wonder if we're over working this battery
because the air is still blowing out,
the fan is blowing and the red light is on.
Let's turn it back on and see if it'll work.
Green.
Blue.
Green.
Okay, are the watts goin' up?
Okay the watts are goin' back up.
Well apparently burning 50% of the charge
that's inside of this giant battery pack,
it needs some time to cool, so back to the charging.
Hopefully we can get at least another mile out of this.
18 hours, 15 minutes remaining, 196 miles,
three miles an hour right now, lookin' good.
Uh oh, charging interrupted at 2:07.
At least we've gained two miles.
Let's go find out why the charging is interrupted.
I'm just letting it run out there.
This is getting down to 9%, the output still shows
that it's pretty strong, oh it's charging again.
Oh no, it stopped again.
Okay, it just keeps charging and stopping.
If there's one thing that I've learned
from owning the Tesla Roadster, is that you don't
want your battery pack to go to zero.
On the Tesla Roadster specifically,
if it goes to zero, you will never be able to drive
the car again with that battery pack.
You have to get a battery pack that cost around $50,000
to replace inside of this Roadster, but even then,
Tesla doesn't make those battery packs anymore,
so you pretty much just have a bricked car.
And look at this beautiful car, it is pretty,
but I don't want it to be bricked.
So, I think at 8%, we're in a good spot
where let's just go ahead and stop this.
So unplug it, how many miles did
that $1,800 battery pack get me?
Ta da, 196, we gained a whopping two miles extra range
off of a battery pack that took me all night to charge.
What have I learned off of this?
First I would say I don't recommend you buying
a giant battery so that you can
use it as a gas can for your car.
Does it work?
Technically yes, is it something that's usable?
Probably not, I did run out of charge once
when I was .4 miles away from a supercharger
and I ended up having to pay $125 to get a tow truck
to take me that .4 of a mile, so I know it could be useful
in that specific situation, but when you're doing
a cost benefit analysis, $125 for a tow truck.
Maybe if that happens five times in your entire lifetime
of owning a Tesla, it's still gonna be cheaper
than buying a giant battery pack and always having it
stored and in your frunk or in your trunk
draining your battery range because it's
an extra 50 pounds of weight inside of your car.
It works, I got it to work, I don't recommend it.
Do not go buy a bunch of battery packs
to use as a gas can for your car.
I've done two experiments now.
It is just too big of a hassle.
The grounding cable that you need.
The expensive battery pack that has
to be charged in your car.
It's not worth it, but I will say,
it was fun to make this video and to do this experiment.
And hey, now we know and sometimes it's good just to learn.
I'll be the dummy that spends the money and does
the experimenting and you guys can enjoy it and watch.
Now I have a giant battery pack
that I've used once and run it done to 9%.
If any of you would like to buy a battery pack
off of me for your house for some reason,
I'm happy to sell this to you.
I'll give it to you for a discount even.
So ah, just hit me up.
(electronic music)
- I've never seen inside of a Model 3 before.
- [Daniel] You never have?
- I've never been up close to one.
- [Daniel] What do you think?
- I like the iPad.
- [Daniel] The iPad is pretty cool?
- Yeah. - Yeah, that's cool.