Electricity generating Shock absorbers

[R.I.D.E.]

Actually I have a Karmann Ghia. Its pretty rough so nothing lost with some sheet metal aero work. It's a 71 so the rear suspension is independent trailing arms, that dont need any axles or other powertrain parts to maintain their alignment.

I also have two diesel engines, a 600 CC 16.5 HP Kubota and a 1 liter 25 HP Yanmar. the Yanmar rotates in the right direction for adaptation to the transaxle.

I would prefer to use in-wheel drives in the rear end. They could easily be installed in the existing trailing arms.

I would do a significant amount of sheet metal aero work to get the CD down close to Basjoos Civic, but with smaller frontal area.

I ws also thinking about some active aero, but the final configuration has not been determined yet.

I was even thinking about making it a 3 wheeler with one in the rear depending on the cost of a functional in-wheel drive.

Tech will have a prototype working in April, but it will not be practical for a car.

Another idea would be to build a bicycle with a hydraulic drive, and energy storage. Parker hannifin has a contest with a 25k prize called the chainless challenge.

Bicycles have no EPA or DOT requirements, while motorcycles have very little.
Being a 1971, the car is considered an antique in VA which means it has almost no restrictions as far as inspections, etc.

regards
gary

[dkjones96]

Are you trying to prove it as a viable technology for practical use or is this just something you are building for yourself?

If you are trying to prove it you'd be better off doing no aero mods at all so you can have a straight comparison with a vehicle of the same type. Then, you could take it to a proving ground and run each car individually until they use a specified amount of fuel to prove your technology.

Sorry to thread jack, I try to make things as provable as possible when showing a positive effect. Your Ghia against another with a freshly rebuilt engine in it would be a good test that people will listen to. If you can't prove it and nobody can see the benefit you just have a bunch of ideas that YOU know work. That's one of the problems with Sandia National Laboratories; they invent a lot of great stuff but don't present themselves well.

[JanGeo]

Gary - have you tried stopping and starting say from 25mph with your hybrid drive and seeing how much speed you recover from the 25mph stop energy. Repeated stops from 25mph and then back up to whatever the hydralic system can propel you will give you exactly how efficient your system is. I do know that the Prius system is pretty lossy.

As far as the shocks at MIT go it looks like they had a well made piston that had two hose fittings coming out of the center of either side of the cylinder body and I imagine some one way valving that would simply pump fluid through the shock. They claim it gave an improved ride than standard shocks and if the system failed it would still function as a standard shock would function. Wish I could remember where I saw the article . . . DUH GOOGLE !!

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/s...bers-0209.html

[R.I.D.E.]

Gents, I wish it was that easy. I was quoted 200k for a prototype. Tech is building a testable prototype for 2k in materials. The wife doesn't like the idea of spending 20-30% of our irreplaceable lifetime savings on my "dream".

Would your wife?

The work being done by Tech includes all the CAD designs, which means I can hire any CAD equipped machine shop to build the pump-motor. The EPA has a funstional mule that is getting 85 MPG average with a bent axis pump.
Everything becomes my property this May, unless Tech expresses interest in shared ownership.

Tech has applied for a support grant that would go on for another 3 years with a final design delivered to Ann Arbor for installation in the existing EPA mule vehicle, which would allow a direct comparison of efficiency as well as the integrity of independent testing.

This quest started with a 42 page document signed by 14 witnesses on August 5 2004. Maybe the present political climate is a necessary ingredient. It is truly sad to have the knowledge to fix the problem and watch my country drown in debt while I keep on plugging away. The sad thing is by addressing the real problem, one we are all familiar with, which is the potential for vast improvement in vehicle efficiency is really possible, solves a myriad of other problems at the same time.

Maybe by the end of this year it will be at the next level. I sure hope so, not so much because it would make me financially secure, but because this planet may not have that much more time for people to ignore the situation.
I am not a liberal or an environmnetalist by any stretch of the imagination. I just hate to see us sell ourselves out to the oil cartel, and continue destroying the environment in the process.

Google Ingo Valentin to see another who has travelled the same course for over 20 years.

Once you have a functional prototype the efficiency questions will be answered, but even then there will probably be some room for refinement with improvements in efficiency. Projections based on the functional prototype will be available in 2 months, but you must understand this is something that has never existed before, so it would seem unreasonable to assume you get it perfect on the first try.

Think of it as the cornerstone to an already existing arch, that depends on the cornerstone to stand alone as a functional system.

Your questions are valid of course, once the efficiency is confirmed, it becomes a no brainer, and the is considerable money waiting for that threshold to be met. Of course once the million dollar question is answered it will become much more expensive for any outside financier to buy any significant percentage of the rights to the design.

In the present financial crisis, you can bet there is no money for anything but proven technology. This may change with the new 300 billion commitment to R&D of new vehicle technology and renewable energy sources.

The other side of the coin is I am just another dreamer with a great idea looking for a handout, from the perspective of those who have seen another 100,000 great ideas that did not work.

What it really boils down to is just bone headed determination, which I was genetically blessed with in abundance.

regards
gary

[theholycow]

Gary, would you be able to gather and extrapolate data from UPS' hydraulic hybrid trucks? I'm sure there must be data available, and even if it doesn't directly apply due to lower pressures or partially differing technology, I imagine that (armed with the intimate knowledge you have of the systems) it would be possible for you to make realistic extrapolations.

[R.I.D.E.]

2000 LB 5 passenger car, 110 MPG city, 90 highway. 1 Liter turbo diesel engine producing 100 HP and 150 lb feet of torque. Aero CD of .25 or less.
Get the CD to .019 and the mileage would go up about 25% highway.

The system would possibly double the urban mileage of pure electric vehicles.

Depending on your trip distance you could always start out with a fully charged accumulator, and get a few miles on that without any outside power.

Cars could have interchangeable power modules for pure electric and IC highway operation.

Basic IC model would cost 10k new as a stripper, posssibly even less.

Powertrain life expectency of 500k miles.

To good to be believable?

regards
gary

[Dalez0r]

Why do you want to add a layer of complication and losses to a pure electric car when 3ph induction motors are pretty efficient across a wide range of power levels and rpm? They don't seem to NEED hypermiled, beyond reasonable conservation of momentum to prevent the losses associated with regenerative braking (which your system doesn't do 100% efficiency on either) What's the point there?

[R.I.D.E.]

The regeneration efficiency of electric cars is about 35% compared to 85%.

I would think that point would be well understood.

Even electric motors have a sweet spot for efficiency.

Google "EPA hydraulic hybrids" if you would actually like to read and learn enough to answer your own question.

regards
gary

[Dalez0r]

Tesla Motors claims 85-95% efficiency for their motor, across the full range of operation loads and speeds. Now, with cheap batteries (*cough* lead acid) I can definitely see total drop to 35% or less but with good LiIon is it really that bad? And, if one adds capacitors to soak up the charge of braking, wouldn't it be much better?

I'm not trying to claim your system is bad for all applications, I'm just trying to wrap my head around why you'd want to use it with pure electric drives when 3ph induction motors driven with a VFD inverter are pretty efficient when coupled with decent batteries.

[R.I.D.E.]

My 85% quote is for the motor to the accumulator and back through the motor.

Their claim is for the motor alone, which ignores the compounding of inefficiencies.

85X85x85=61.4% so your comparison is basically flawed.

It also ignores the other losses in conversion of the energy from AC to DC and back, as well as other losses.

As I said look at the EPA hydraulic hybrid data. Your system would need capacitors to recover the massive increase in energy in any panic stop stiuation, as well as 4 wheel drive to avoid the 14% loss calculation if you only use 2 WD.

Try driving your car in heavy traffic using only the emergency brake for stopping to understand the true factual comparison.

So now you electric car needs 4 whell drive, which requires 4 wheel motors, capacitors, as well as a very expensive battery, unless you use lead acid which has pitiful energy density. Don't even think about the cost of your system or its weight. Don't even think about the cycle life expectancy of your components or their replacement costs.

In contrast how many ancient hydraulic machines do you see that just keep running after thousands of hours of severe duty and neglect. If they start to leak, replace a few seals and hoses and keep on abusing them for years to come.

Your electric car will never be cheap, mine will cost less than you lithium battery pack, and mine will rust away to a pile af flakes before you have to replace and major powertrain components.

Of course forget ever driving 500+ miles per day on a vacation, unless you buy ANOTHER car for road trips. Mine can do either easily, so youy can do fine with one car.

They have built hybrid SUV's. The EPA has built a Ford Expedition that gets 40 MPG with their bulky system. Imagine where they would be if they had spend the 20+ billion that has been spent on battery research over the last two decades.

Quite the contrary, your proposed system is not good for any application, while mine is good for EVERY application.

Accumulators can store 65 HP seconds per kilo in weight. That means I can recover all the energy in a 60-0 braking event in a package that weighs a hundred pounds, reapply that same energy at 85 % efficiency for blistering acceleration, hundreds of thousand of times without replacing anything.

The future of short range electric vehicles in any metropolitan area will be a lot of dead batteries and cars stranded on the side of the road. When you run that battery dead it will have to be replace much earlier than its normal several thousand cycle lifespan, and compared to replacing an engine the bill will require you to take a second mortgage out on your house.

regards
gary