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A YouTube personality wanted to take a 1,800 with his Tesla, but didn’t want to have to stop to charge his electric vehicle. So the YouTuber made a major gas-powered modification to make his Tesla “cordless.”
Matt Mikka touts some impressive engineering feats on his “Warped Perception” YouTube account with more than 1.2 million subscribers. He previously constructed a see-through jet engine, a jet-powered go-kart, and a jet-powered Tesla.
For his latest YouTube video, Mikka set out to give his Tesla Model S a modification that would allow the electric car to drive 1,800 miles without stopping for a charge.
“I really like my Tesla but what I don’t like is stopping to charge, especially on a road trip,” Mikka stated. “I don’t even like stopping to fill up my gas-powered car, and that’s way faster than charging.”
So, Mikka attached a gas generator to his Tesla Model S that can drive 405 miles on a single charge.
Mikka spent more than a year and a half designing and building the gas-powered modification that he calls the “Cordless Tesla.”
The efficiency of the electric vehicle decreased significantly because of the gas generator – especially at higher speeds.
Mikka estimated that when driving 50 mph, the gas generator provided 225 watts per mile and 24 miles per gallon. When the Tesla was driving 80 mph, he estimated that the car got 389 watts per mile and 14 miles per gallon.
The YouTuber was forced to drive at slow speeds in order to not run out of fuel in the generator and the electric batteries.
A police officer pulled over Mikka for driving too slow, “I pulled you over because you were going slower than the normal rate of traffic.”
Mikka told the officer, “If I go faster, I won’t make it. I can speed it up a little bit, and then I got to pull over and wait like 15 minutes, and then I can go and speed it up again. It’s a thing like time versus distance.”
There were other issues with the gas-powered Tesla.
Mikka ran the noisy gas generator overnight in the parking lot of the hotel where he stayed at.
“This was a cool build but to me it was basically useless. It just didnt have enough energy,” Mikka said. “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.”
Mikka told Insider, “I believe with version 2 I will be approaching the perfect car overall and definitely the ultimate road trip car.”