Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain

It seems to me you’re talking about a range extender, which lots of Chinese EV makers use. Many do buy them but sometimes you get the worst of both worlds: weighty like an EV and the heat, vibration, exhaust of a petro car. For most people the extended range is only needed very occasionally but you have to carry the ICE system the whole time.

That is exactly what ePOWER is, that configuration is called a series hybrid and is more commonly seen in heavy industry like diesel trains or trucks in the mines (for better or worse).

More recently effort is also going into series hybrids for public road haulers, which I personally think is a great application for it since you can potentially put a lot of the equipment into a hot-swappable dolly.

I drove a Nissan Note (Nismo esition) with ePower and it could happily spin the wheels when taking off, not something you normally get out of a tiny economy hatchback. I think it has 140kw electric drivetrain? 140kw is pretty sporty when delivered instantly.

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Chevrolet Volt (2011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended-range_electric_vehicl...

Not for cars, but Edison Motors in Canada seems to be going this route right now for their heavy duty trucks and heavy-duty pickup truck conversions.

Disclosure: I have a small investment in them.

You may be interested to read / watch videos of Audi's RS Q e-tron they raced in the Dakar Rally and even won with this type of powertrain - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_RS_Q_e-tron

Ford and Ram are both doing this with their next generation electric pickups. Range and towing on pure electric was deemed too compromised.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/what-is-an-erev-extended...

Already a big push with this. They call them EREV now, extended range electric vehicles.

Theoretically couldn't you take an electric car and put an off-the-shelf generator in your frunk and wire it up to charge the battery as you drive?

Just a note: the Technology Connections video above goes over why this doesn't work well for cars (but does for train locomotives).

Isn’t that how diesel trains operate?

bmw I3s were this type of hybrid as far as I remember.

the ICE extender was an option.

There were several of them: the first and second generations of Chevy Volt, Fisker Karma, BMW i3, and a couple of Chinese brands.

They're less efficient than parallel hybrids at high speeds (on a freeway). And you also need a fairly sizeable engine to keep up with the consumption at freeway speed, so at this point you might as well just throw in a planetary gearbox.