Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
The Wardenclyffe towers needed huge engines turning generators to make that electricity too.  |
This account is one I have never heard of. The goal of the tower was to harness the electrical field of Earth, hence, it had no moving parts. Even the images of what this tower looked like don't show any generator to produce the electricity. We only have rumors about why it was defunded, but when you think about it, no one can profit from a free service, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
There are two kinds of hybrids that work:
1) Non plug-in hybrids, like the Prius and Insight. These have systems that basically only capture energy lost when you slow down, and use it to accelerate you again. With this in place, a gen4 Prius can get more than 50mpg city, whereas an equivalent car without the system would probably only get about 30mpg city. Don't underestimate how much energy is needed to accelerate the entire mass of your car.
These cars have lithium batteries which could fit inside a lunchbox, because they really only need to store enough energy for a couple of "launches", usually between 0.8kwh and 1.5kwh.
2) Plug-in hybrids, which have large packs designed to continuously provide assist (or even entirely electric propulsion) for many miles and hours at a time. Depending on how large your portion of electricity you use, your gas mileage can actually be infinite - if you never start the gas engine. Battery packs for these vary; the Chevy Volt's is about 19kwh and the size of a large suitcase. It's capable of pushing the car down the highway at highway speeds entirely on its own for over 50 miles. The Prius Prime has a ~9kwh battery capable of about 25 miles. Both of these cars also capture energy when you slow down, but their programming is designed so that they're assisting basically all the time, and you really only need to start the gas engine if you want to drive past what the battery's range is.
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I am not interested in using electricity to
solely move the vehicle. I should be more clear than I was, when I say using electric assist,
"all the time", I mean using it for gasoline engine conditions that benefit from the added torque of the electric motor such as vacuum loss, AWD mud/snow driving, and stop-and-go driving. My interest was peaked by the notion of providing the low end torque that my LT1 needs by using electrical assist. Then I got more excited thinking about how to utilize this electrical assist from AWD ability in the snow to performance such as that in the Mclaren P1 Hybrid. I really need to look into how the Mclaren system operates and how best to apply the philosophy to my own car.
I see the benefits of stop-and-go electric assist, this is undeniable in my mind. However, there are other areas where electric assist can help a gasoline motor, both for AWD ability in the mud/snow, to performance fun! As I said, I am willing to plug in my car if the battery needs the additional charge, and this also paves the way for an engine block heater if it is possible to use a rather large yet expensive lithium battery to enable the block heater's use.