A Plan of a Hybrid Car to Help the Environment

reply to post by mansouryar


I tend to dislike the hydrogen fuel idea as well. It's deffinatly pertinent that we find a way to make energy practically "infinate". again awsome, and i hope ATS can be good to you and offer many ideas that may help you make more creations.

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by mansouryar

 

Compressed air has some major drawbacks - the one being "where do I get compressed air?"

It's not just an energy problem - it's a distribution problem. People will not buy cars they cannot travel with. The U.S. is far more sparsely populated with much more distance between cities and individual homes than many European (and certainly Asian) environments. My commute tomorrow is going to be about an hour round-trip, and that's fairly standard.

I can't just rely on being able to plug it in at home and let it charge. I have to be able to charge-on-the-go (which means some kind of station).

Fueling stations aren't going to purchase and maintain systems that service cars that are not popular.

... You begin to see the problem. It's not so much an issue of "can we build it" - but so much as "how are we going to introduce it?"

Further - I think you're going the wrong direction with this.

If you read my plan carefully, you'd find out there are enough solutions to cope with this problem. You can compress the air by on-board and off-board compressors. The real problem is how to provide more power to give it to the battery packs or compressed-air tanks. The point is, I've aimed the sparsely populated regions, as you said, more than other regions for this car.

If I had a lot of money to simply throw into my car, I have several changes I would make to the overall design.

It's good. Your changes seem rather awesome, but my focus is the propulsion. That is the heart of a car and without it, a car is just a useless toy. If you could establish a strong propulsion system for your car, further changes are well possible.

Originally posted by Required01
reply to post by mansouryar

 

The only thing i can recommend is: built it. Buy a cheap car for under 500 dollars (no need for a running engine ofcourse) and built it. Talking is cheap, building a prototype is epic! bet there are several people in your area also interested in projects like that who can even help you out.

On paper everything looks nice and great, until you do trail and error it's just that an idea on paper. I made some screw-ups on things that looked great on paper, but with trail and error you improve it. I came a long way in 'free-energy' right now as a prototype.

Thanks for recommendation. If nobody wants to collaborate with me in building it, I'd have to build it by myself. This plan involves several advanced technologies and it's too hard for somebody to do all of them, even I doubt a small company would be able to, but when there is no real help, I should start making a prototype.

Originally posted by XL5
In my opinion, people need to get over the whole weight/size issue. ... So you have to weigh whats more important, money/environment or the risk of a crash.

IMHO, there must be a balance among the weight/safety and propulsion/efficiency. However, a light, less safer car can avoid crashes by a clever driving, but a heavy car can't avoid more need to power for propulsion.
You can screw some threats to your light car if you drive very carefully, but you can't screw the nature laws implying a heavy car needs more force for its propulsion.
Nonetheless, if you read my plan preciously, there are several points describing an increased weight could give more contributions to the power recovery for the car, compared to a light sample.

Originally posted by TrueBrit
reply to post by Aim64C

 

Ideally the vehicle should charge while it is in use as well as when it is at rest, without any reference to external power sources. Battery technology needs to be advanced to the point where you can store a hundred thousand miles of travel in a battery and require no other powersource for your wheels. Messing about with any other methods like stationary recharge points is going to hamstring your vehicle and require too many other companies being involved.

You're right. If we could provide the needed energy for the car while driving, that would be great. We can conduct a significant part of the harvested energy into the compressed-air tanks which are cleaner than the battery packs. Such tanks contain less energy density, but they are not as toxic as batteries.
Besides, as a solution for the critical conditions, we can consider the stationary recharge points, to give confidence to the drivers and maybe to make this plan more attractive, because involving too many other companies, means creating more jobs and helping the economy of an area, and a country indeed.

reply to post by mansouryar


Normally I would completely agree with you, being a fellow of working class persuasion. However where this is concerned, the very moment you involve the sort of company that would be ideal to install ANYTHING at a service station or petrol station, you would be involving massive corperate interests, which would almost instantly produce the effect of making your invention over priced, and probably force one to charge extortionate amounts for replenishment.

These effects, resulting from the involvement of the organisations you are no doubt thinking of, would utterly remove all viability of any design you tender, by making them financially unworkable for the majority. Remember, even if you make a vehicle which has zero negative environmental impact, you can take one cars worth of carbon out of the pollutant cycle. But the number of cars you can sell depends entirely on the cost to the motorist, and therefore keeping that as low as possible is vital.

Involving big business in this idea will automatically increase the cost of every part of the process , from design of the vehicle, to the installation of pumps, or charging points, or any other standing apperatus you might want to place on a petrol forecourt. Placing ANYTHING on a forecourt gives Big Oil a chance to mess your business plan, and ensure that you can never sell enough vehicles to enough people, to make a significant impact on the issues that your new vehicle is designed to address.

Again, to make your new vehicle worth designing, prototyping, and marketing, you must consider what you are trying to achieve. If you want to save the world from pollutant nightmares of every stripe, then you must remove the big business aspect from it, because big business will force your prices so high , that no one will buy your product. They will militate against your invention, while shaking your hand, and when your back is turned they will use thier phenomenal financial clout to destroy your reputation, the validity of your vehicle, and anything else they can do to remove you as a player for the market share of vehicle sales. Thats to say nothing of what car companies will try to do to prevent a cleaner vehicle from making a proper impact on market shares.

You must isolate your invention, and yourself from such negative influence, if you are ever to make a significant difference to the world, because if you rely on being able to use the infrastructure which already exists, or the forecourts of the very people who are CAUSING the problem that your vehicle would solve, they will use that to sink your entire idea by pricing people out. I garun-damn-tee it.

Originally posted by Advantage

Originally posted by Rhino5
reply to post by Highlander64

 

This "green transport" you speak of was considered dirty 100 years ago. Cars when they started were considered cleaner alternatives to horses.

Meh, the whites can use the carriages and the mexicans can clean up the dung and sell it as fertilizer. Im NDN.. Ill just steal your horse.

In reality, thats a great excuse. It wasnt more dirty. It certainly didnt damage the planet like cars do. But Im a hypocrite, I love my vroom vroom that goes blub blub when I start it up.

Maybe we need to refer back to the old methods to gain better results, for the same reasons they were abandoned when newer methods came to the scene. If the technology could not solve the present needs of providing the power for the electric cars, some old methods might be helpful. Let me repost what I mentioned at another forum:

Some time just prior to, or during (I forget which) the second world war, gas powered radio sets were available, in Britain at least. They consisted of a bunch of thermocouples, and a gas flame, with the voltage generated being used to drive a normal radio. I believe the waste heat generation was similar to that of an incandescent light bulb. It always amuses me to see an old idea, that had been discarded as useless, being revived, modernised, and becoming a novel, high-technology solution to a problem.

As another example, let me quote from page 25:

Various treadmills are in different sizes (for adults, children, etc) that can be purchased. Also, using domestic animals like dog, horse, cow, or sheep can also be used to this end, by particular treadmills [96]; charging the car for owners of these animals sounds easy, and benefiting from the animals for this job can be done professionally, and finds economic aspects.

So let me explain about this paragraph more. Regarding the rate of petroleum consumption as the automobiles fuel, sooner or later there would be no oil to run a car.
To name an example, one could consider PPV:
The People Powered Vehicle, or PPV, was a 2-person pedal-powered car introduced in the United States during the oil crisis of the early 1970's. Manufactured by EVI of Sterling Heights, Michigan, it sold for less than $400.
People powered vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This idea is not popular for now, but the future might make it a more serious option. There are several useful links about this concept:
Human-electric hybrid vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (introducing the whole idea)
Velomobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (considering most of such made vehicles)
Naturmobil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (invented by an Iranian engineer!)
Directory:Human-Powered - PESWiki (listing some other examples, one of them is):
HumanCar® Inc.
HumanCar aims for a healthy planet with healthy drivers
Human Powered Car Can Go 30 MPH While Driving Uphill | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
Two other interesting instances:
TWIKE | home
Twike - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (a human-electric hybrid vehicle / light electric vehicle)
150MPG Human Powered Goblin Aero
Aerorider | Ultralight vehicle | Electric hybrid tricycle (ultralight electric hybrid tricycle)
Actually, human power in the style of on-board or off-board, could be effective for a car, especially the smaller the better. Definitely, consider a microcar.

A related news: Foot Powered Generator from Freeplay Energy
,with a cool comment:

Joan: Maybe my husband could get used to my shaking foot syndrome if I could charge some of his batteries with this device.

reply to post by mansouryar

...
Therefore, human body is able to generate power in a clean way:


Runners Could Power Street Lights | TechMASH Tech Gadget Geeky News
Light Running: Energy-Generating Human Hamster Wheel | Gadgets, Science & Technology (this page seems cool, see also the below news of the page)
*
The question is: What can be done to have less need to human body? A possible solution for this situation could be an old trick, using animals, but in a new fashion.
Indeed, this solution has been done before, but it should be performed in wider dimensions.
Inspired from the above information, one could use the animals in special treadmills or "green wheels" to generate power:


Cows on Treadmills Produce Electricity for Farms | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
Odd Invention: Idle Livestock Hit the Treadmill to Generate Electricity For Farms | Popular Science
.
This method might be applicable in everywhere but downtown of big cities. The local economies in rural areas could be less dependent to the external energy. If I were the manager of a repair shop or EV charging station, I would buy several cows or horses to use them to give a contribution to produce electricity for the customers, so my animals would gain experienced muscles and I could also register them to the equestrianism or betting on horse racing to earn money.

source: www.ultimatecarpage.com...

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by TrueBrit

 

Ideally the vehicle should charge while it is in use as well as when it is at rest, without any reference to external power sources. Battery technology needs to be advanced to the point where you can store a hundred thousand miles of travel in a battery and require no other powersource for your wheels. Messing about with any other methods like stationary recharge points is going to hamstring your vehicle and require too many other companies being involved.

I do not want to be driving a vehicle with a battery system carrying the equivalent power that is held in over 320x that which is held in a tank of gasoline for a vehicle of that size (figure a little over 300 miles to each tank, which is about average for most vehicles). That energy is capable of being released quite violently in almost any method of storage - and I don't want to be around when those batteries are cracked open in a wreck. I'm not quite sure what form their energy release would take - but I don't want to find out.

Not only that - but batteries are a -long- way away from being mass or volume equivalents to hydrocarbon fuels in terms of energy density - let alone superiors. You're going beyond chemical battery technologies and into some realm of "quantum capacitors" (whatever those are - Quantum-* is kind of a indirect way of saying: "magical") or something equally beyond our ability to create.

Returning to the real world, that means we are not going to be able to operate our vehicles without some kind of fuel to burn. At present, we must rely on forms of combustion engines - but this will change in a decade, or so, as direct hydrocarbon catalyzing fuel-cells will begin to mature and reach marketable stages of development - which will offer nearly a 2-fold improvement over engine efficiencies and eliminate the need for any moving parts outside of wheels and steering (well, windows and the like - but you get the idea).

Following a breakthrough in fusion or some other source of electric generation - the car, itself, doesn't really care what is providing it electricity - so long as it is being provided enough (unfortunately - solar will never be sufficient to run anything you recognize as a vehicle in a practical manner).

Remember - things like Air Conditioning and heating all require massive amounts of power - even by comparison to physically moving the vehicle through the air/down the road. Add in stereos, lights, and other things, and you have a lot of power that must be provided for by the car's power systems. Your car's electrical system, currently, doesn't often have to deal with heat; that is all taken from the waste heat of the engine.

You can make some incredibly efficient cars... even some that -can- run under solar power but they will be bare-bones and not really something comfortable or practical for the average person's transportation needs.

This survey tries to be realistic, but it's not optimistic enough and one needs to act idealistically. If the conditions were not so critical, I would agree to act slowly to gain a sophisticated engineering scheme too, but the current situation of the environment makes me, at least, to have a disgusting guard against the fossil fuels in favor of green solutions. I believe my plan has dealt with the related concerns of efficiency and practicality.

Hybrid cars are a joke. There are diesel cars that outperform hybrid cars in every respect.