Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
KERS was much more than that. It was an attempt by the racing organizations to add some relevance to their sports.
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Unfortunately most F1 fans and drivers saw it as an annoyance. Teams who used it sometimes would decide not to use it on certain circuits, and others who found it too expensive were locked out.
Also the teams using it at the start of the season had pretty much stopped by the end. There were some issues in very wet conditions too. So it was dropped.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
Comparing a passenger vehicle to any racing car today is like comparing a hang glider to a space shuttle. The only thing they have in common is they both "fly".
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I agree, however I wanted to correct the impression in the post previous to mine about F1 teams currently evaluating regenerative energy systems. KERS was that evaluation and now nobody uses it. It was evalued, found wanting and abandoned in that environment.
Just like Hang Gliding is great fun, but not much use for launching or recovering satelites.
One of the teams bucked the trend on KERS and used a flywheel instead of batteries to store the extra power which I found interesting. Flywheels are kind of fascinating. A French power operator had a standby power system for one of their major computer systems running on a flywheel supported on magnetic bearings. It was made of carbon fibre so if it got out of balance it would shatter into powder, and it had up to 12+ hours of energy stored in it.
Obviously a battery can retain power for longer but it was an interesting alternative.