The Perpetual Motion Machine

Actually I should have titled this “How do I school the ignorant about the laws of thermodynamics?”
I was visiting an old friend who was talking about a mutual old friend who had moved into a camping trailer on fifteen acres of Nowhere, Missouri; or semi-moved. Anyway, he lit the place with his perpetual motion machine, and you will find it either humorous or infuriating. Maybe just sad.
The way it supposedly worked was that “Perpetual”, as I’ll call him, had two twenty four volt truck batteries, two solar panels, an alternator from a truck, and a motor to power the alternator, which fed its power to the batteries that ran the motor that ran the generator.
Yep, you read that right.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t do the math, and probably couldn’t even understand the math, since the US public school system has been dysfunctional since at least 1958, when I started first grade. You’re not too stupid to learn, your teacher was too incompetent to teach.
We didn’t have kindergarten, let alone preschool, since most moms stayed home. They could afford to back then. I’m told I could read before school, and remember knowing how to tell time earlier than that.
But they really suck at math.
What I found humorous was that it would appear to work, the batteries the panels charged running the motor that lost energy trying to get free energy. But he was wasting the free energy he got from the panels on his ignorant device!