I hope that I am not speaking blasphemy but I am kicking around the idea of a diesel electric RV. Maybe a small battery pack for storage and short trips (like out of the RV park). Any ideas or suggestions??
Looking at my numbers, I realize that 30% thermal efficiency (TE) is rarely achieved apart from aircraft and racing engines operating at peak efficiency. So using 25% TE (probably still too high) the numbers come down a bit. Here's the same paragraph using the new figure.Stay Puff,
One way you can guesstimate the power requirements is to convert your gas mileage at 60 mph. Take your mileage and convert that number to gallons per hour, i.e. 10mpg is 6gph, 15mpg is 4gph, etc.
There are some basic fuel consumption to hp calculations based on thermal efficiency, assuming a 30% thermal efficiency (maybe optimistic) 6gph is about 80hp. Since these calculations are linear, 1gph is about 13hp. Therefore, 30mpg @ 60mph works out to about 26hp. 26hp is about 19kW or an average of about 160A @ 120V and that sounds about right from existing conversions in normal driving conditions.
Back to your motor home, 10mpg (80hp) is about 60kW or 500A @ 120V! Even 15mpg (53hp) is 40kW or more than 300A @120V which is pretty severe continuous duty for most of the drive systems discussed here. In my opinion, you're better served by sticking with a conventional ICE drive in a motor home. The suggestion of getting a small electric runabout instead for local driving makes a lot of sense to me.
Electric drives can be a good answer to the right question, but they are not a universal replacement for ICE propulsion.
Eric