170 mpg hydraulic drive car

[puddleglum]

Old Mechanic, a lot of what you are purposing sounds great and makes sense. But, then you throw in a claim that seems totally unrealistic. I'm not saying you're wrong, it just sounds unbelievable. I've worked with hydrostats in heavy equipment for years, and any motor capable of 500Hp weighs hundreds of pounds and they don't cost $100, they are thousands. Even small 50hp motors are $1000 or more. Also, most piston motors don't have the good low speed torque you are claiming and would need gear reduction in the wheels. You talk about direct drive motors for regeneration, then talk about coasting with no drivetrain losses, even though hyd. motors have a lot of frictional loss in neutral. Accumulators are very efficient, but a 5gal. accum. operating at 400 bar, would have to be built very heavy to take the pressure. I know there is lot's of new technology that I'm not familiar with, like the motor that Innas was describing. I guess I'm just asking for an example or specs. of a production pump and motor that does what your claiming, or is this still theoretical? I'm just tring to understand this better and I really hope you can make it work.

[user removed]

The 500 hp motor you can hold in your hand is a direct quote from John Kargul, head of the EPA HH program. He also stated that the implementation of a practical HH would be as revolutionary to the auto industry as the assembly line!

If you want I can provide a link. I have spent enough time on this to have gone from high school grad to a PHD degree over the last decade.

The cost per unit I quoted is reasonable, when you consider it in a manufacturing context with mass production, which is exactly how it will be produced for public consumption.

I think we all understand that there is a huge difference between mass produced cost per unit and what it sells for as a replacement component. You would be better off to buy the whole Prius than to buy the electric motor, battery, and planetary gear set differential as replacement parts.

3 parts cost more than the whole assembled car, about 5,000 parts. That's a perfect example of why you can't fairly compare the cost of the sum of the components to a manufactured assembly. A 2010 Prius would cost you close to $200,000 if you bought the parts individually, and you would still have to put it together.

The patent application has been published and approved. It has been thoroughly investigated by a group of students and a MIT PHD professor. They concluded it was capable of 35 HP and 380 pounds feet of torque from 0wheel speed in application and recovery. That's power at the wheel for 4 wheels direct to the tire without any gearing whatsoever. Stress analysis of the design showed no potential wear issues that would keep it from functioning for thousands of hours, and overhaul procedures that would allow a complete rebuild in less than 1.5 hours labor, per wheel.

Some people will legitimately claim that what I propose is not even a hybrid by definition.
The argument has some merit.

I don't care what you call it if it works. Are you trying to defeat inspiration with a definition of the machine?

That's the most ludicrous rejection criteria I think I have ever heard.

If you want to get into a theoretical debate about the evolution of battery technology and propose that the "miracle" battery is just a few years away, then you have missed the whole point.

Don't even consider what the miracle battery will cost, or it's potential catastrophic failure scenario in a 200G impact, something like the Peterbilt that t-boned the S10 at the intersection on TV.

You could use water as a hydraulic fluid as long as you provided some anti freeze to the water for low temp function.

What happens to your miracle battery at 50 below?

Agendas are driven by arguments that disintegrate with unbiased consideration of all the failure potential of components.

Current Americas cup racers use accumulators with operating pressures of 12k PSI. An 1/8th inch wall thickness seamless tubing can handle 300 PSI. The perfect place for the high pressure accumulator is inside the low pressure accumulator, located in the transmission tunnel where only the most catastrophic accident scenarios would cause a loss of integrity. Failures of high pressure inert gas charged accumulators would result in expulsion of the inert gas which could actually provide some protection from fire of combustible fuel.

My design contains the high pressure circuit within the low pressure return containment vessel, so high pressure leaks dump fluid into the low pressure circuit, with overpressure protection of the same circuit.

High pressure water is used to slice through steel like a butter knife.

Ingo Valentin was right 25 years ago when he started his pursuit of the HH. He certainly was not the first person to advocate hydraulic energy absorbing systems. Aircraft have been using then for over 50 years. The designs are ancient.

If a hypermiled 1970 Opel that is basically stock can get 124 MPG 40 years ago, for the love of whatever deity you prefer, just think of how different the world would be today if the resources we dedicated to battery development had be devoted to a practical HH vehicle that employed the exact same operational tactic that proved that it's not just how efficient the engine is.

The power train can be improved as proposed by Valentin, INNAS, and many others and double the mileage with the same engine. The engine can be improved to almost double its current peak efficiency which for gas IC engines is currently in the mid 30% range.

Take my VX which had averaged 55 MPG. Double that with power train improvements, then double it again with engine improvements.

Reduce the CD to Basjoos levels and the proposed system automatically compensates for the lower sustained average energy demand.

That's basically what Valentin is using in his calculations and his claim for 170 MPG has been done already with a manual transmission 1st gen Insight.

The difference is the Insight requires perfect hypermiling techniques, while the HH does it without any driver input other than the attention of a soccer mom with 4 kids on her way to a game, with a cell phone ringing, and two of them fighting in the back seat.

That's the real world, and people will never dedicate themselves to the amount of intelligence and attention to detail it takes to do it the hard way, as we try to do it every day.

regards
Mech

[RobertSmalls]

Since a >100g collision will kill all the occupants anyway, catastrophic failure of chemical or hydraulic energy storage systems in those collisions isn't very important. But if there are any frame-distorting collisions that the occupants can survive, I wouldn't want the pressure vessel to be part of the frame.

Here's a tough question: If Ingo Valentin has been pursuing hydraulic hybrids for 25 years, where are his results? Has he built a 130mpg prototype or even a 50mpg one? Even a 20mpg prototype would be better than what we've seen so far.

His 1996 New York Times ad reports that as of 1996 he's recieved $750,000 in funding and needs $2.8m to complete a prototype. That just does not seem reasonable.

From where I'm sitting, Mr. Valentin appears to be more interested in funding and publicity than in completing the project. I have to question whether he's a reliable source of information.

His theory is sound, in theory, but can it be put in to practice?

[Frank Lee]

See why I asked Miracle Trike Boy the "tough" questions?

[puddleglum]

Mech, you did answer some of my questions, but, I assume from your response that the drive components that you are purposing are still at the theoretical level. Since you say you are planning to fit a small system to a bike this year, what type of pump motor combo are you planing to use for that? You must be planning to use off the shelf parts for a proof of concept project aren't you? A human powered/hyd. hybrid actually sounds very interesting. Good Luck with it and Yes, I would like that link.

[user removed]

http://www.youtube.com/user/Ride122609

Robert, this is scratch built and cost over $10,000, so Ingo's request for money doesn't surprise me.

Compare it to the 40 some billion spent on battery development in the last 40-50 years.

Green Car Congress: EPA to Award Up to $1.35M to Projects to Advance Hydraulic Hybrid, Engine and Fuel Technology

Hydraulic Hybrid Cars: No Batteries Required - 2008-04-28 00:00:00 | Design News

Transonic Combustion | Our Technology | TSCi Technology - Fuel Injection Systems

Take my civic VX, add the super critical fuel injection system.

Then aero it like Basjoos.

There is 100 MPG

The toss out the whole power train, brakes, throttle control, clutch, flywheel, starter motor, axles. Reduce the fuel tank to 3 gallons instead of 10 to offset the weight of the hydraulic fluid.

Then add 4 in wheel drives weighing no more than the brake components you no longer need.

A high pressure accumulator where the transmission used to be 3-5 gallons capacity.

Make the front cross member the low pressure reservoir.

The in wheel drives look like the running example on the first u tube link.

80-100 highway
120-160 city

no special driver input necessary.

Game set match, could be done in 12 months with enough funding.

I don't need to solicit it here, so you don't need to call it a spam sales pitch.

Scratch built prototypes are extraordinarily expensive, but we are moving to mutual development with other entities and other financial sources.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this will happen, and very soon. If not in the US somewhere on the planet, because it is a cheap and effective option. Are we going to wait for the Chinese to build it?

Robert, I can't tell you absolutely why Ingo has not succeeded, but I can sit here and rattle off hundreds of examples of the stupidity of mankind, that have cost millions of lives.

One example. In the American Civil War, trench warfare was developed to a state of the art degree, but in spite of that known, the idiots in Europe repeated that same stupidity, with modern weapons with exponentially greater killing capabilities than those of only 50 years earlier.

Britain considered a million casualties a year as normal attrition in warfare.

20 years later they almost repeated the same scenario.

Has stupidity disappeared in the recent decades.

I went to my US senators office and had an interview, when I explained the benefits, I was told that eliminating all of those components in a vehicle would eliminate all the jobs necessary to build those components.

I guess that is too high a price to pay for energy independence, and the creation of 3 trillion in wealth every year in the US.

Stupidity is alive and well and thriving today.

regards
Mech

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

I think we all understand that there is a huge difference between mass produced cost per unit and what it sells for as a replacement component. You would be better off to buy the whole Prius than to buy the electric motor, battery, and planetary gear set differential as replacement parts.

Automakers charge high prices for model-specific replacement parts because they can. If you look at generic parts like 12-volt batteries, shock absorbers, and tires, the prices are more reasonable. Then consider that hydraulic motors aren't specialized components used in one line of automobiles, they're generic parts used in all sorts of industrial equipment. You just go to an industrial parts catalog - or do a search on "industrial hydraulic motor" - and order.

So it seems that there would be a lot of applications for lightweight, efficient hydraulic motors (and other parts) without building them specifically for cars. So I'd think that someone with a better motor design could sell it without having to start a car company, while anyone wanting to build a HH car ought to be able to buy all the components for a prototype drive train off the shelf for not too many thousands of dollars, install them in say a Metro chassis, and have a working demo model to show investors.

[user removed]

Thinking along the same lines James.

I can buy an off the shelf Honda 5.5 HP pressure washer with a pump capable of 2700 PSI and 2.2 gallons per minute.

A small motorcycle frame, don't need the engine or anything from the engine to the rear wheel, except possibly the rim and tire.

Then you don't have to deal with integration of the existing brakes and any other specially built parts except the rear hub which would be the regenerative hydraulic IVT.

I bought some aluminum and bearings and seals for the rear hub, which will have to be basically scratch built. The ball bearing inner diameters are 100 MM. which gives me plenty of room for the offset adjustable journal.

So far I have $200 in the project. Guess it would be best to start another thread since this is getting off topic.

Should have it finished by the end of this year and it will provide a perfect proof of concept.

regards
Mech

[user removed]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

See why I asked Miracle Trike Boy the "tough" questions?

Frank I have been answering "tough" questions for the better part of a decade.

Not sure what other Trike you are referring to, but all I ask is keep an open mind, tempered with a healthy amount of skepticism.

Plenty of highly qualified engineers have looked this over thoroughly and every question was answered to their satisfaction.

At that level of education they have the background of knowledge, and sometimes experience, to quickly determine if my claims are inflated.

Plenty of engineers on this site. I don't mind answering questions as long as they have some thought behind them. Otherwise the question is based on a prejudicial assumption that I don't have the mental capacity to conceive an innovation.

Never been told that was the case.

Personally I believe we all start on a basically level field of mental capacity, the difference is how much we exercise that capacity, just like staying in shape physically.

regards
Mech

[Frank Lee]

I meant the guy that has all these ethereal magic tricks for efficiency, only hold-up is he needs vast piles of cash to be donated to him before anyone will find out what they are.