MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Alec Cameron:
 MR> Alec Cameron said the following to Roy J. Tellason on the
 MR> subject of Engine Design (24 Sep 97  18:50:10)
 AC> On (22 Sep 97) Roy J. Tellason wrote to Day Brown...
 RJ> Another consideration,  and one that I don't often see addressed with
 RJ> regard to electric vehicles,  is the power grid.
 AC> Thru the 1940s to 1970s AUS and USA no doubt, doubled the grid sizes
 AC> and generating station capacities, at intervals of 7 to 10 years.
 MR> Don't forget hybrid technology. This increases the usage 
 MR> efficieny out of every drop of gas by an IC engine a whole lot. 
 MR> Because it runs the IC engine at constant speed at its most 
 MR> efficient RPM, driving an electrical generator to charge a 
 MR> battery and/or flywheel, it can cut gas consumption 
 MR> dramatically. I heard 1000 miles per tankful using a turbine IC 
 MR> engine for a typical size U.S.A. car on a home power tv show 
 MR> recently.
Never mind a typical car,  I like mine bigger!
Hybrid systems like that have always been of some interest to me,  but you 
only ever seem to hear of them being done by folks who spend a *lot* of time 
and effort to put some sort of a prototype vehicle together and that seems to 
be about the extent of it.
I would like to know what it would take to retrofit an existing vehicle to 
support a hybrid system.  Assuming that you want to use the existing engine 
for starters,  it'd seem to me that the transmission and the rest of the 
drive train would have to be removed,  and that the suspension would have to 
be modified at least to some extent -- with that rear axle gone it'd need 
*something* in there different.  Then there's the matter of motors to drive 
the rear wheels,  and support for them.  Finally there's the control system, 
the gas pedal would no longer be connected directly to the engine...
And what sort of energy storage?  I've seen systems talked about that would 
use batteries,  and occasionally heard other methods mentioned.  One that 
stands out in my memory uses a hydraulic pump at the back end of the engine, 
and a fairly heavy-duty pressurized tank in the trunk,  with hydraulic motors 
at the rear wheels.  That sorta looked interesting,  except for the high 
pressures involved all over the place and the absurd amount of room in the 
trunk that got taken up by that storage tank.
Batteries?  How many,  and where the heck would you put them?
Has anyone offered a retrofit kit of any kind for this purpose?
 MR> Gas/electric stations could store energy by trickle charging 
 MR> large underground flywheels. 
I've heard mention before of using flywheels to store energy,  and there are 
a couple of things that are going to need to happen before it gets to where 
this is a realistic option.  One is that they need _magnetic_ bearings,  ones 
that effectively suspend the flywheel with minimum friction loss.  The other 
is that you've gotta package the thing in a vacuum.  I haven't heard of 
either of these ever actually being done,  though.  Do you know of any actual 
work,  as opposed to theoretical speculations,  having been done on this 
stuff?
 MR> Then quickly charge a customer's car without any heavy drain to 
 MR> the grid. Thus no need to upgrade the electric grid. 
I disagree with this point.  While you can shift the loads around,  the 
overall effect is *still* going to be a much higher demand for energy than 
what's currently being used.  That was the whole point of the article I read.
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
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