"ADDING" a rear engine to a FWD car to run at the same time.

[Frank Lee]

Motors are electric. Engines burn fuel or use steam expansion.

[ciano22]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Motors are electric. Engines burn fuel or use steam expansion.

Yes, I know. I constantly try to correct myself in the matter, but the fact that I've been calling motors "engines" for significantly more years than I've been an engineering major, who now knows better, makes it difficult to always be politically correct. Either way, I'm sure you understand what I'm saying. All engines are motors, but not all motors are engines.

[AndrzejM]

Cool project I'd love to see it running.

It reminded me of the good old Scirocco (I had 4 of these in the past) and some strange ideas of Volksburg engineers Bimotor Scirocco

Keep us posted anyway

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by ciano22

In the future, I want to add a 400HP Tesla motor(or some other powerful electric motor) to the back and set the car up to run like a true hybrid for amazing efficiency, but also be able to run both engines at once for insane power.

Originally Posted by ciano22

Sorry. I probably didn't explain clearly. The car already has a system which allows for 4 of the cylinders to be shut down, making it go from a V8 to a V4(or inline 4?). My goal for econ mode is to have the car stay in 4 cyl mode constantly, and then use the electric motor to help the small 4 cylinder engine accelerate the car without straining too much.

Simple adding an electric motor to a conventional ICE system doesn't make it more efficient. Cars like the Prius gain efficiency by allowing the ICE to be more efficient by:

-Running Atkinson Cycle, which has greater efficiency but considerably less torque at a given displacement, especially at lower RPM
-Allowing the gas engine to be downsized below what would otherwise be acceptable in an ICE-only car
-Allowing the engine to shut off when not needed, and start back up unobtrusively

Rather than helping your fuel economy, adding such a hybrid system will probably hurt it. Converting mechanical energy to electrical and then back to mechanical is lossy. Running an ICE at lower loads is less efficient, so taking load off of an ICE is counter-intuitive if you're looking to save fuel. Hybrid assist allows a smaller displacement ICE to cruise at higher load, saving fuel. Plus, you're adding weight to the vehicle, which costs energy to accelerate. The only area that might save you some fuel is that you can drive around using grid electricity until the battery is depleted.

Adding an electric motor will definitely give you more power, but unless you do some serious changes to the ICE, you're not going to see economy gains.

[bondvagabond]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Simple adding an electric motor to a conventional ICE system doesn't make it more efficient. Cars like the Prius gain efficiency by allowing the ICE to be more efficient by:

-Running Atkinson Cycle, which has greater efficiency but considerably less torque at a given displacement, especially at lower RPM
-Allowing the gas engine to be downsized below what would otherwise be acceptable in an ICE-only car
-Allowing the engine to shut off when not needed, and start back up unobtrusively

Rather than helping your fuel economy, adding such a hybrid system will probably hurt it. Converting mechanical energy to electrical and then back to mechanical is lossy. Running an ICE at lower loads is less efficient, so taking load off of an ICE is counter-intuitive if you're looking to save fuel. Hybrid assist allows a smaller displacement ICE to cruise at higher load, saving fuel. Plus, you're adding weight to the vehicle, which costs energy to accelerate. The only area that might save you some fuel is that you can drive around using grid electricity until the battery is depleted.

Adding an electric motor will definitely give you more power, but unless you do some serious changes to the ICE, you're not going to see economy gains.

Totally agree, but if you did grid tie for the electric it might make sense, One of those monster garage shows did a front wheel drive Mini Cooper with 2x100+ Hp snow mobile engines mounted in back driving the rear wheels. Since electric motors don't really need transmissions you could get by with a simple chain drive setup like them.