does my car have an alternator?

[ADAM96]

by the end of a run, my car's battery reaches ~30% each time, even though the time where i have my engine off and my radio or lights on is maybe 2 minutes over the whole run. does the engine not charge the battery while it's running?

[Honorable_D]

It does, but the lore is the ARC system you installed in your passenger seat takes the entire alternator to power it.

You can get lucky and get a positive quirk though, such as Car Goes Fast ---> Battery Charges.

[Buzzzz]

No!

[daffodilistic]

There's several in-game/lore reasons to explain the battery charge issue:
1) The car is not a normal car
2) ARC device installed in the car sucks up just enough current that turning on the headlights drains the battery

With that said though, I do wish the devs explained this better in-game.

[Wingnut Mcmoomoo]

Originally posted by Buzzzz:

No!

if it didn't then your battery would drain faster, no alternator is made with all that extra high powered tech installed in mind. Its not even that crazy to imagine a draw big enough to beat out an alternator.

[Buzzzz]

Originally posted by Wingnut Mcmoomoo:

Originally posted by Buzzzz:

No!

if it didn't then your battery would drain faster, no alternator is made with all that extra high powered tech installed in mind. Its not even that crazy to imagine a draw big enough to beat out an alternator.

I guess you could look at it that way. Especially since if you turn off all electric the car does not drain the battery when it's idling, but the arc device is still powered.

I stand corrected.. something is balancing the load.

[Bruh]

From a gameplay perspective: No it does not. Your car draws no positive charge to the battery from simply being On. Going faster doesn't do anything. Any ability you use, and every electric component turned On in the Car will draw power from the battery that you can't get back without some method of charging.

From a lore perspective: Apparently it does, and it powers your ARC device, but then there's no left-over power to put towards the battery.

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What I would recommend, if you're still early enough in the game that Battery power feels low/limiting, is to simply play a little more and focus on collecting resources + LIM energy to unlock some of the Battery-related items. The unlockable racks for the car are also EXTREMELY helpful, even if you won't get a lot of equipment for them right away. You can get yourself a good number of options for generating + storing lots of power (and yet more materials). There are parts that let you actively siphon power from Anomalies, and there are several passive parts that pull battery power from the zone. I settled on a very power-conservative playstyle early on, and later in the game I used Wind Turbines to passively charge my batteries as I drove around. In that way, it is *almost* like having an Alternator in the car, but that charging method DOES depend on the speed at which you're moving (or potentially, wind speeds) in order to generate power. Any time you're creeping around (such as uphill or slowly working your way around anomalies) or stopped, power generation returns to zero.

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Another small tip: I *do* think that the engine takes a little bit of power to start up. I was watching it pretty close in early runs trying to figure out how to best work around it. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I played the game "superstitiously" with no external guides so that's how I worked out that it functions. When I say I went for a "power conservative" playstyle what I mean is that I basically left the car running constantly and focused on siphoning gas/filling up whenever I could. It saves power but it wastes gas; that's kind of the trade-off. I'd be in a big hurry to pull up close, park the car and flick off the lights, run and do my thing, and then circle back in time to hop in the car and peel out.

[Malidictus]

Personally, I wish we had access to a gas powered generator to stick to the side of the car. We have a Fuel Synthesiser to turn power into fuel, why not something to go the other way? Not to mention - that's far less outlandish than most of the other tech on display.

[83athom]

Originally posted by Bruh:

Another small tip: I *do* think that the engine takes a little bit of power to start up. I was watching it pretty close in early runs trying to figure out how to best work around it. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I played the game "superstitiously" with no external guides so that's how I worked out that it functions.

It does not, you likely have an undiagnosed quirk of "Dashboard -> Turn Key -> Battery -> Drains"

[PizzaCrunch]

I get it op.