Quote:
Originally Posted by Phoenix'97
Well, I am interested enough to see if I can help in their research by involving my car. Right now I can't purchase their unit but I can nudge them on the suggestion and see if I can get their minds to contemplate how to make such a system work on my sports car to allow for my gasoline motor to help charge this system while turning the rear wheels and this hybrid system turning the front wheels.
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Link to MTSU's Green Energy Management page, including an update on the Hybrid Kit concept:
Green Energy Management (GEM) Updates | Middle Tennessee State University
I wouldn't do the alternator thing. This is just me talking, but the quickest way to get maximum uptake from buyers is to make the system as no-brainer easy as possible. I wouldn't balk at switching in alternators but a lot of people might - and the big thing with motors is in order to get any kind of speed out of them, you need voltage. The alternator in your car is NOT designed to provide that. The motors on the wheels, however, ARE already designed for high voltage, and with a simple flip of a switch a motor can become a generator - and in the case of these motors, they'll make way better generators than the alt in your car. So: when the battery needs recharging, simply pull a vanishingly small amount of current out of the motor/generators as they are pulled down the road. The motor management computer can be programmed to hold off such operations until the TPS is below a certain threshhold, when the taillights are on (lots more under those conditions), when the car is pointed downhill, etc. Not too difficult to find plenty of situations where the battery recharging can be done for a minimum of fuel burn.