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According to an article that I got from a coworker, the MIT team calculated the following:
1 cm of suspension travel
1.5 Hz
spring constant of 160,000 N/m
in a 3000 lb vehicle
Add this all together and you get 1.45 kW available from the suspension.
Now, there will be massive efficiency losses of course, but that is a LOT of power to tap into. The average car needs ~300W to run. So, our system would only need to be ~20% efficient to power a vehicle. If we wanted full alternator output (60A for my estimate) it would need to be ~50% efficient. That might be a bit tougher, especially when you lower the weight of the vehicle to what we normally drive here. Obviously, a heavier vehicle will produce more power.
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