Electric cars have come a long way. The charging times are faster, the ranges are further, and the batteries are holding more charges. That said, range anxiety still bothers some consumers, and understandably so. You wouldn’t want to run out of juice when you’re on the road.
With that, Ford recently came up with a rather amusing idea to get rid of any fears of losing charge. The American automaker recently filed a patent for a roof-mounted spare battery system for electric vehicles. Yup, you read that right.
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According to the patent, the compact spare battery pack can be "rented or leased prior to an off-roading trip, for example". By the looks of it, Ford wants to make electric overlanding a possibility and not make campers worry if their vehicle will start the next day. From the patent drawing, the battery pack has a cable system that can be plugged into the car’s charging port, allowing it to charge in remote locations. To (over)simplify it, it’s a powerbank for electric cars.
The patent also suggests that the battery pack is also detachable, so you don’t have to drive around with a huge block on your roof. The file also says the packs are intended to be modular and fit other kinds of EVs. Ford claims that the system should be easy to maintain and upgrade.
That said, it might take a long time before this ever comes into reality. While battery packs are lighter than before, they easily weigh around half a ton. If Ford were to release this technology now, it won’t be a one-person job to mount it, for sure. Dismounting it will be just as difficult, too.
Then there’s the matter of the vehicle’s chassis. Putting that much weight on the roof can stress the car’s structure. Most racks and baskets can take around 80kg to 100kg, which isn’t enough to bear the mass of a battery pack. For reference, the pack in a Mustang Mach E tips the scales at 485kg. It will take a lot of work to shave that weight off, but that will also come at the cost of charge capacity. It also raises the vehicle’s center of gravity, which makes it more a rollover risk.
Until battery manufacturers find a way to make even smaller and energy dense packs, this idea will remain on paper. But once that happens, Ford can say that it called dibs on 'EV powerbank' technology.
