There's a reason this is being done in busses -- SPACE! Those capacitors would have the be as big as medium sized propane tanks! But as far as recovering most of the braking energy, a capacitor would certianly work. The recovered energy would be just about enough to get the bus back up to speed, so the battery packs would be greatly reduced in size and range greatly extended. The entire floor of the bus would still be covered with batteries and capacitors though, at least 12" thick. Good for a city bus that doesn't need all that luggage space underneath anyway. But that sucker must weigh at least a ton more than a normal bus, depending on how big it is (I'm thinking about 40' -- single axle city bus). ------------ Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2007 12:20 PM From: Wrambler242@xxxxxxxxxxx The capacitater [SP?] run buses they are/were trying in Russia and some eastern block countries sound like they may be the cats meow for capturing energy quickly. The caps recharge fully in as little as 12 minutes! They discharge fast too, but with a 12 minute recharge they can work around the quick discharge. With the right system the bus could literally pull into a stop open doors for 15 minutes, close doors and pull out fully charged to run to it's next stop! Now, If you could capture wasted brake energy and dump it into the caps, you could theoretically cut stop times depending on the terrain of the routes and direction of travel. 15 miute stops going up, None going down, etc; -- Frank Swygert Publisher, "American Motors Cars" Magazine (AMC) For all AMC enthusiasts http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html (free download available!) _______________________________________________ Amc-list mailing list Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.amc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/amc-list