Rara makes good points about weight and power requirements. I believe 50HP electric motors weigh hundreds of pounds. (I was dreaming about a car the produced electricity in the engine compartment, and instead of a transmission had computer controlled motors at each corner. Put a 50HP electrical motor at each wheel, with very little driveline loss
however, I think I had over a half ton of motors before you added anything to the car such as the engine and generator
Anything that weighed less probably costs a lot more.
Of course we know that power (electrically speaking) is equal to (current x voltage) so you have to increase one of them to produce large quantities of power.
1HP = ~745W (rounded down even)
At 12V to produce 745W you need 62A of current. You can quickly see that the 12V system in today's cars can't supply that for long. Heck even the proposed 48V systems will still need nearly 16A of current to make 1HP.
Higher voltages provide different challenges as you need better insulation and isolation to prevent arcing and to protect the humans that would ride around in the vehicle.
If you had a 240V generator like you might find running off a 8+HP gasoline engine, you would need about 3A of power to produce a single HP and most of those generators are only rated for say 10A of 220V power (or 20A of 110V) depending on the engine. So you are going to need a BAG (Big A.. Generator) to produce sufficient electricity for a sustained period of time.
I wish it were easier, as I'm far more comfortable with electricity than I am with mechanicals
TB
I do have a EE degree, but so much has changed since I graduated
