Quote:
Originally Posted by hayden55
Its a big maybe on the exhaust turbine spinning an electric motor. It is the next low hanging fruit but Physics comes into play. Since (the best) turbines are only 30% efficient and then it has to go to an e motor then to charge a battery you have a very inefficient complex system. F1 has decided its too expensive and failure prone and are voting as a whole to get rid of what they call the "MGU-h" for the next rule set.
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Not for Mercedes. Aside from their F1 engine, they now also have a similar engine in a high end, luxury coupe sedan.
It's just scavenging exhaust energy, and re-converting it to kinetic energy.
Energy that normally would be lost.
Unlike a turbo, which adds a lot of load on the engine (an engine is basically a big air pump), an exhaust turbine powering a generator, can have a fixed, or variable load, that will be much gentler on engines.
The excess power can easily be routed to an electric motor to one of the rear wheels (in case of a Front wheel drive car).
It's a workable upgrade for econocars, that don't cost a lot, and don't significantly lowers engine life. In fact, it could actually increase it, if used right.
Then again, the power output of such generator will be low. The excess power will do pretty much nothing to 0-60 time, due to the additional weight of motor and battery pack. However, it definitely can improve MPG!
It's basically a hybrid, driven on exhaust, rather than having a gasoline engine charge the batteries; while driving the car.