Watch: Tesla With Gas-Generator Range Extender Completes 1,800-Mile Trip

Recent comments from Elon Musk show that the ‘green’ billionaire still believes in fossil fuels, at least in the “short-term,” to keep society moving. One YouTuber has taken Musk’s comment to heart and created a gas-powered range extender for his Tesla. 

YouTube channel Warped Perception said in the video’s description he built the “first ever Cordless Tesla” powered by a small gas power plant generator on the back of his Model S.

“This is the first version of the cordless Tesla which is burning gasoline to charge the car instead of the conventional plug-in charger,” said Matt Mikka, who runs the YouTube channel. 

Mikka told Bussiness Insider: “I really like my Tesla, but what I don’t like is stopping to charge, especially on a road trip. I don’t even like stopping to fill up my gas-powered car, and that’s way faster than charging.” 

He told the Insider the 1,800-mile trip encountered some problems: 

Since the car consumed more energy than the generator could produce while driving, Mikka had to stop for 5-6 hours per day while the Tesla sat and charged. At hotels, he left the noisy generator running overnight in the parking lot so he could have a nearly full battery by morning. During one highway stint, he was pulled over for driving too slowly as he tried to keep energy consumption down. 

“This was a cool build but to me it was basically useless. It just didn’t have enough energy,” Mikka said in the video. “My goal is to drive at road-trip speeds for as long as I want until I get tired, not until the car needs to be charged.”

He told Insider he’s working on a new generator-powered Tesla that improves upon the original design. 

“I believe with version 2 I will be approaching the perfect car overall and definitely the ultimate road trip car,” he said. –Insider 

What Mikka got wrong was the size of the power plant due to the inability to meet the power demands of the Model S. If he had a light enough electric vehicle with a power plant that produced enough power — maybe he could be onto something. 

However, the supercar maker Ariel Atom has already beaten Mikka to the punch by recently unveiling its jet turbine range extender for a new EV race car. 

“The jet turbine is a range extender – it exists to charge the 56kWh battery, not drive the wheels,” Top Gear wrote in the video description. 

Since fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere and the move to decarbonize the grid and everything within steams ahead, perhaps the best of both worlds is an EV with a fossil fuel range extender power plant: making it cordless. It could save the government billions of dollars in EV infrastructure spending.