Hacker News Reader

Most cars are cooled by a fan these days, and many use an electric fan that can vary speed to keep the engine cool.

Best efficiency would be to use the fact you’re not moving to have more radiator surface area available but it’s probably not worth it.

View on HN

The fan in cars is typically not enough to keep it cool while stationary under load, but in typical home applications you won't have that big load anyway. Big load for a car is >10kW. You can also pretty cheaply get a bigger external fan, like those used on dynamometers.

One nice side effect of using car as generator - free heat in winter if you extend cooling loop to your home.

How is a stationary car engine under load? Oh right, like my asshat neighbor that likes to sit in the driveway a 6AM revving his engine every. single. morning.

When you put a generator on it, which is what the thread is about.

it wasn't a serious question looking for an answer.

fwiw revving the engine while stationary wouldn't really put much (if any) load on the engine

> Big load for a car is >10kW

I don't have any idea if it's relevant at all (or how much the number can be trusted), but when I floor the accelerator in my Bolt, the dash indicator says it's using about 120kW.

The fans cars have are not sufficient to cool the engine at high load.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com