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The Insight stock engine has a very large permanent magnet 3 phase motor bolted to the output shaft on the engine. For a while I had this connected to a Schottky rectifier and then to a DC-DC converter with the internal rectification bypassed. This was connected to a bank of large supercapacitors and a small lithium battery. It worked well, but there were a few things to consider:
-At idle, the motor produced around 65v, and at redline it was around 400v. Both of these extremes were outside of the range of voltage my DC-DC officially operated at, though I never had any issues with its protection tripping. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if a vehicle that wasn't so electrically frugal at idle might have overloaded it under certain conditions, e.g. defroster, A/C + blower, headlights, maybe heated seats or something running. Not an unrealistic situation.
-No more bump starting. An alternator basically starts producing electricity right away, the DC-DC did not.
-The Mean Well unit I used would likely not have worked in very hot climates. Imagine leaving your car parked in the sun, only to find it wouldn't charge your 12v battery until it cooled down.
-Electrical loads were typically under 20 amps. Reducing electrical loads probably *realistically* goes farther than increasing efficiency of it's production.
-Supercapacitors and lithium batteries can be dangerous under certain circumstances.
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