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economy of scale
I have to wonder how well this technique would work on a large vehicle like a refuse truck, freight truck or bus.
Over the road heavy vehicles have lots of space between the axels and the body where these devices could be installed. There is a huge amount of un-suspended mass which means that the shock absorbers have to dissapate a huge amount of energy. The weight to HP ratio of these vehicles is a lot more heavy on the weight side. A caterpillar C7 engine is only about 210hp but has torque out the wazzoo. They generally carry an alternator that will produce 165 amps at the low end and up to 320 on the high end.
I would think that these linear generator type shock absorbers would be more easily retrofitted to large applications either as an additional shock absortion system or as a replacement to the current systems. The shocks are pinched between the ground and up to 90,000 lbs of suspended mass so the energy to be dissapated is a lot more and the stroke on the current shocks is as much as 30".
What do all you more knowlegeable folks think these facors will mean to this sort of recouperation scheme?
One more neat thing about these devices, you get to recouperate some of the energy that it took to get you up a hill when you go down a bumpy hill. They harvest energy invested in the system by gravity.
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