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Imagine you are pushing a car that is fairly light. The human engine has low horsepower.
In my younger years I could get a small car going about 7-8 MPH, and I could push start that car myself.
Now imagine you have a mechanism that allows you to push at your ideal power level, where you are not running to push the car faster. The mechanism allows you to push without having to run and waste energy in keeping your speed matching the car. This same mechanism allows you to ride a type of conveyor belt behind the car where your speed differential never exceeds about 4 MPH, where you can apply your maximum human power to the car to increase its speed, instead of having to exert most of your energy running behind the car instead of applying most of your power to increasing the cars speed.
How fast do you think you could get the car going on only your own physical strength?
Would it be close to the same speed you could run if you where not trying to push the car?
The purpose of machines that move things is to amplify the efficiency of the power applied to the machine itself.
Consider the bicycle as the machine. It allows human energy to be more efficiently utilized for increased speed. Very efficient until you get to the point where aerodynamics become the major energy drain.
The conceptual illustration I am trying to help us visualize is an example of the effectiveness of a true Infinitely Variable Transmission. If you add capacitive energy recovery to an IVT, you have the ability to "push" the car most efficiently, regardless of how you accomplish the pushing.
That is the core rationale behind my now patented IVT design. The high efficiency of low speed hydraulic drives is a known factor, with ranges of 93-97% drive efficiency.
While a hydraulic accumulator is not an effective long term sustained energy storage system like a battery, it has several distinct advantages, especially when it comes to high rates of energy release and recapture.
The advantage of an accumulator is efficiencies approaching 100%, cycling efficiencies approaching infinity, low cost of production, and potential integration into chassis design.
As an energy damper between the peaks of application and regeneration, an accumulator and in wheel drives capable of replacing the normal friction brakes and recovering the vast majority of deceleration forces is a much more efficient wheel to wheel energy application and recovery system.
I have said this before many times here. When you have the ability to absorb and reapply the power, as well as the ability to properly load your fuel consuming power source to exploit its ideal state of efficiency, and you can do this at drive efficiencies of 95% and regenerative efficiencies approaching 90%, then you have the ability to increase fuel mileage to astounding levels.
We have debated the effectiveness of regenerative braking, and when done electrically the advantages are certainly debatable. The energy application and regeneration of the panic stop do not match the capacity of batteries motors and controllers, unless they are built to such a size and strength that the weight becomes a real penalty.
Hydraulic-electric
Hydraulic-diesel
Hydraulic-gasoline
Hydraulic-steam
Pick your configuration, but the "shock absorber" of all the phases of vehicle operation, in my opinion, will be hydraulic, just the way your brakes are hydraulic.
Since it is patented and a prototype in in the works, it may not qualify as a concept, but I think understanding the tactical advantages of such a system is important.
regards
Mech
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