Breakthrough in power storage allows a year's driving without recharging

Electric cars are great energy-savers, and good for the environment, too. But it's troublesome to have to charge their batteries all the time. For this reason, Su Jinzhu, a resident of Taiping City in Taichung County, has invented a "Reserve Power Transformer and Transmitter Apparatus" that can make one charge last a full year. Su has received a 10-year patent for his invention, and various companies are inquiring about producing the device.

Su, 60, only has an elementary-school education. In his youth, he worked as a repairman at a well-known motorcycle factory. Later on, he designed "special machinery" for various people. Su feels that electric vehicles are the wave of the future, so he has devoted himself to the research and development of a super-strong electric storage battery.

Su says that electric vehicles in many countries use power from conventional batteries for their drives. After they have been driven a certain distance, it's necessary to recharge the batteries. This is why the vehicles have not become more widespread or commercial popular. The storage battery Su has invented requires no charging, and can be used for a year or even two.

Su says that this environmentally friendly storage battery uses 12 conventional battery cells inside, and has a circuit controller that starts the motor. A "flywheel" is used to connect to the starter. The power generated by the generator is partially diverted to the drive of the vehicle and partly recycled to charge the battery cells. Within the service life of the storage battery, the vehicle may be continuously driven; it does not require a fresh charge every 100 kilometers or so, as is the case with current electric vehicles.

I found this while surfing the net,I don't know how credible the site is but if true then that would be amazing!!

Here is where I got it from.

I don't understand this.
What is the generator that they talk about in that article that powers the motor and recharges the batteries?

There isn't much detail, but the best I can figure is maybe a pulley wheel is installed on the shaft of the generator. That pulley wheel is connected via a belt to an alternator of sorts. The alternator would only need to trickle charge the batteries as the belt turns it.

The battery last a long time in your car because of the alternator.

Funny but most electric engines bypass that trick. If an electric motor can move a large vehicle, you can devote a little extra work to moving an alternator to recharge your batteries.

And why is it that electric cars don't make use of regular transmissions?
Its like driving a gas engine in first gear all the time, which isn't efficient.
I think they do that on purpose.

You can't really apply what works on a Combustion Engine to a fully electric engine, you have to find new ways of doing things you take for granted in a regular car which has to be worked out and be cost effective both in order for it to be economical.

As for this breakthrough it could work but the only problems I see is the inherint touchiness of Flywheel batteries. They are great but combersome.

Electric motors apply maximum torque throught their operating speed unlike the internal comustion engine that produces maximum torque in a very narrow band.
Hence the need for no gearbox (which is essentially there to multiply the torque)

That's interesting.

So you're saying the RC electric car crowd has no need for their 2 or even 3 speed transmissions?

Why would RC companies design and build them if they weren't useful?

They make extensive use of them. And the only difference between a toy car and a full size one is the scale, if we're talking electric cars.

Direct drive is apparently not efficient for all applications.

By utilizing a transmission, you can use a smaller motor since you're giving it leverage to do a bigger job.

Firstly the link does not work for me.

Secondly this is clearly a hoax.

You cannot get more energy out of a reaction than you put in so the idea of an electrical car recharging its own batteries is impossible.

You cannot recharge batteries, and at the same time use those batteries to run electric motors.

The current can only flow on way at a time.

If you disconnected the electric motor from the batteries to recharge them you would then lose power to the motor.

There have been thousands of people that have tried to get energy for nothing, and none of them ever produced a working example that was shown to authorities on the matter.

[edit on 31-10-2005 by ArchAngel]

Funny but most electric engines bypass that trick. If an electric motor can move a large vehicle, you can devote a little extra work to moving an alternator to recharge your batteries.

The energy you put into the alternator to 'charge the batteries' would be less than the energy that charged the batteries.

If the alternator were 100% efficient it would still be a loss because you were carrying the weight of the alternator in the car.

And again, you can't charge batteries while you are using them to power a motor because current only flows one direction at a time.

[edit on 31-10-2005 by ArchAngel]

Well the Guy does have a patent so I'm sure it works.

The way I understood the article the flywheel runs the generator/alternator and that power is used to help drive and charge batteries , and the system has built in circuit switches that allow it to run and charge batteries at the same time.

Originally posted by lost_shaman
Well the Guy does have a patent so I'm sure it works.

Don't be so sure on that! There's all sorts of patents for perpetual motion machines in the US patent office and none of them work.

Originally posted by Indellkoffer

Don't be so sure on that! There's all sorts of patents for perpetual motion machines in the US patent office and none of them work.

I didn't intend to imply every patent represents working technology , but I think its perfectly reasonable to charge batteries and drive at the same time.

Please provide another link, because the first one gives an error. I did a quick search and cannot find anything out about this, but I didn't spend much time on it. I would be skeptical about this for a couple of reasons.

If it were possible to run a electric motor off batteries while turning a flywheel to turn an alternator and recharge the batteries and go a year without recharging meanwhile also using the motor to propel a car, it would be considered a free energy device and would more than likely appear as an electrical generator first before being implemented in a car. The value of a device like this would be far more reaching in other areas of power generation than just for use in a car.

I imagine the idea stems from the technology used in hybrids, where the momentum of the vehicle is used to generate power to recharge the batteries. But the energy used to buildup momentum is far greater than that recovered. In the whole system, each component is likely to only have 80% efficiency, so eventually the batteries will die.

Originally posted by ArchAngel
And again, you can't charge batteries while you are using them to power a motor because current only flows one direction at a time.

Actually it is possible in pulsed electric motors, and the mention of a switching circuit leads to think this is what is being used. The coils of a motor are pulsed with current, and when the power is turned off the current wants to continue to flow in the coils or inductor (Lenz's Law) so it can be recovered in a battery. I played around with this and it works quite well, but it can only make a motor more efficient, not over unity.

Some inventors like John Bendini utilize batteries in their free energy devices because they do have the capability to regenerate when stimulated by current. He claims he can run his device and recharge dead batteries, or if just left to run, the batteries seem to last longer than normal. But as far as I know it has not been proven that the device generates more energy than it uses, I think it is just more efficient.

I think this link works.

english.www.gov.tw...

Thanks for the link, Lost. I was hoping there was more info, but apparently not. If this were true, it would be a major scientific breakthrough, and there would be more info. Seems like you hear about these things every once in a while, but none of them hold up.

So if you don't utilize an alternator, how are you going to run your electronics in the car? You know like radio, any onboard computers, lamps, etc.

Don't tell me, you would run that stuff off your precious battery supply.

Also, seems to me you would run a pulley system off the main shaft anyway to power something like a serpentine system. Gotta have air conditioning and power steering.

Then there are power brakes. Lets see, with no combustion engine to provide vacuum for the system, you'll need a separate vacuum pump.
Hmmm, sounds like that needs power too....so where would you get it?
Guess thats why there are hybrids, that gas motor has to do all the important work.

The car would probably utilize a battery bank system. The engine would draw power from one set of batteries for a while and then switch to a fresh set after awhile, then you could use an alternator style recharge method as well as power braking to help recharge the spent batteries.
This is how solar racers operate. The solar cell system recharges those batteries which are currently not in use. You could even add a solar collector to the mix to help recharge those batteries quicker.

There is another method which could be utilized at all times while the car is moving, can you guess what it is?

There is another method which could be utilized at all times while the car is moving, can you guess what it is?

OK, its been long enough.

We all give up.

What is it?

Solar Power?
Wind? (Through a duct driving a fan/alternator assembly?)

You can use an air impeller to turn a shaft of an electric generator as a method to trickle charge the batteries, or maybe even directly to the motor at high speeds and thus sparing the batteries to some degree.

Popular science was showing off a concept car on paper that uses a turbine fan to do the same job. Problem is, you need really high speeds to get it to turn.

An impeller wouldn't have the same deficiency. All it is, is a fan whose blades are mounted in a cylinder fashion. Steam boats use old school versions. Air conditioning systems use them or even some home air cleaners. Turbos use a version to. All are examples of its shape.

Basically, you would mount the impeller in the body of the car somewhere, let's under the hood to make it easy to understand. And like a turbo powered car, you would have a scoop which would lead to one edge of your impeller fan. As the car moves forward, the air pressure would force the impeller to spin and turn the shaft of the electric generator its connected to. The charge then would be directed towards the batteries for instance. Small electric generators are good for this since they are easy to turn. A larger generator would require more distance between the shaft and blades to get enough leverage to rotate the shaft enough for any real electric current. And being in the car, space is limited.

Next time you're in a car garage going about 10 mph, put your hand out the window, there's still pretty good air pressure at slow speeds in an indoor enviroment. Outdoors with a gentle breeze is even better. Plus when even travelling with the wind, there is still some air pressure in front of your vehicle at all times. Of course moving into a strong wind would be great.

The system would be very reliable and efficient, and it could be mounted in places not very noticable. Say for instance in a fender well with a hose scooping air from under the car to power the fan.

Basically, you would mount the impeller in the body of the car somewhere, let's under the hood to make it easy to understand. And like a turbo powered car, you would have a scoop which would lead to one edge of your impeller fan. As the car moves forward, the air pressure would force the impeller to spin and turn the shaft of the electric generator its connected to.

If this could actually work you would see it on all cars.

The reality is that any energy from the turbine generator comes from the motor powering the vehicle.

What you gain in electrical energy comes at the price of wind resistance minus generator EMF losses, friction, and resistive heat.

There is no free lunch.

If any of the ideas you presented actually worked they would be free energy machines.

ArchAngel, read this :

Impossible according to the Laws of Physics?
A fool’s paradise of unlimited energy, almost for free, obtained through mysterious devices - the technical control of gravity: Such science-fiction-like claims strongly resonate with primaeval human dreams and are therefore bound to stir unbelief and scepticism as well. Innumerable inventors have believed to have found the perpetuum mobile, and the scientific community, made wiser from such experiences, already habitually reacts with defence, if not with derision and ridicule. Every single physicist and engineer has learned that a perpetuum mobile - a machine which performs work or produces energy from nothing - is impossible, because such an undertaking is not allowed by the first law of thermodynamics. This „Law of the Conservation of Energy", formulated in 1842 by Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878), states that the sum of all energies always remains the same, and thus energy can only be transformed into another form (e.g., heat into work) but cannot be generated or annihilated. The conclusion is drawn that machines with an efficiency of more than 1 (100%), producing more energy than is used to operate them, cannot exist. As Gottfried Hilscher claims in his book, „Energie im Überfluß" (Energy in Abundance) (Hilscher, 1981), this is already refuted by the heat pump which, by the way, first was developed by Nikola Tesla. Whereas, for instance, conventional electrical power stations have weak energetical efficiencies of under 40%. With heat pumps, it has been possible since the 1980s to obtain efficiencies of nearly 2.

According to Hilscher, the energy conservation law is only valid for closed systems and linear effects. But in space-energy converters, especially if magnets are involved, we are dealing with open systems drawing their effective energy from a cosmic energy field, the „gravity field", „tachyon field", or „zero-point energy field". He maintains that the converters produce nonlinear effects which violate the energy conservation law.