Re: [Amc-list] Re; ELECTRO-RAMBLER =revisited=

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Wrambler242@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I did some heavy reading  of the first Saturn site you
> posted and after thinking it over am sad to say, "I don't see
> the point".


Physics, physics, physics. No free lunch here. Toyota etc aren't
stupid, but they are conservative. The hybrid can be made,
supported as a product, and not kill them when smallish design
things go wrong.

The problem is largely that short-term economics isn't
the way to look at transportation systems, the costs are
not-in-the-vehicle, eg.  pollution, waste, heat, accidents,
insurance, quality of life, traffic, time wasted, junkyards,
wonr tires, etc. But unfortunately you and I can't hardly
influence those things so we get only to stick batteries in
things like cars.

The real solution is none-of-the-above, eg. urban transport
systems, and save the car for weekends and fun and hauling.

But for making something you could drive, the locomotive model
sounds right to me: a battery packed sized only to provide
capacity for some number of 0 - 60 accellerations, and a small
but sizeable super-efficient dinosaur fueled constant-output
generator to charge it. Flat and level 65mph the genset would
provide cruise energy+recharge. When you park it would charge up;
if you happened to be near an outlet you'd plug it in and the
genset would shut off. I bet it would take 1/5th the batteries
of a full-electric to pull that off.

And THAT would be buildable.

I could find my spreadsheet, but a 60mph car slowed to 0mph dumps
2 MEGAJOULES of energy in that much time. It's a LOT of energy
just pissed literally into the wind as heat. That's just stupid.
Multiply by every car on the road and it's embarrassing and
criminal, but there's no electrical-generation/storage system on
the planet that can input that much energy in such a short time.
_______________________________________________
Amc-list mailing list
Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.amc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/amc-list