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Electric Cars as Fast as Ferraris
Ubergrunt writes "A Welsh engineering company has made a motor to be used on electric cars that will make them as fast as a Ferrari. "The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets. Instead it relies on transmitting electric pulses across up to seven rotors, arranged in different phases. These are "fired up" in turn, much like the pistons of an internal combustion engine. There are no gears - the motor provides enough torque at one revolution per minute to put a vehicle into motion - and it spins at up to 2,500rpm.
"Size for size, we can provide 400% more torque than any type of motor currently available," says managing director John Bryant."
It's Welsh. Welch is when you go back on your word. Curiously, the Welsh find this word offensive, but it's a different word and not to be confused with Welsh!
and close down this so fast that nobody will notice
That should be Welsh - not Welch. Sigh. Way to offend an entire nation :P
"Electric Cars as Fast as Ferrets" ...and I'm thinking, what, tiny electric motors for burrowing robots?
--
Toby
http://bash.org/?1988
<kritical> matts: bikes go faster than cars...a bike at 60 mph is a lot faster than a car at 60 mph
<matts> kritical: um no...
<kritical> matts: um yes
<kritical> my sisters sport car at 60 mph goes faster than my dads explorer at 60 mph
<kritical> a bike at 60 mph will blow by a car at 60 mph
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
And I thought they'd made a motor out of grapes...
...is the loudspeakers to make it sound like a Ferrari. Seriously, that's what I see sports cars used most for, cruising around and showing off, not speeding. The really nasty drivers are always driving around in some styled-up trash, going so fast it's a wonder the nuts and bolts hang together.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The path to pure electric cars is not in making more powerful motors, but in improving battery technology. Thats not to say that the concept here is not impressive, it is. However, running four of these motors (one for each wheel) is going to draw some SERIOUS juice.
so, it's a VERY large floppy drove motor (Stepper)
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Electric motors have always had loads of torque, but having enough to start the vehicle at one (yes, 1) rpm is really impressive.
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Yeah, I'd like to see that actually bear fruition. Chances are it will either be snubbed by the automotive industry, or will be so damn expensive they won't have a working version in commercial vehicles for 40 years.
Yet Another Electric Car Prototype that will never reach production.
Won't be fast when you tow the 2,000 lbs of batteries you'll need to keep it running more than 20 miles... Electric vehicles are great, until you consider how to get the power into them...
Personally, I wouldn't mind if the interstate system was setup with "slots" like the old slot race track toys, for recharging on the go...
Way to kill formula one!
If it wasn't boring enough already, now the only thread of excitement i.e the pitstops, are likely to be gone.
Who wants to see a car merely being plugged into the mains, we want two or three blokes hefting around a heavy, potentially dangerous fuel pipe. Not thius namby-pamby shit.
Can it fly out of a 2nd story window in reverse at high enough speeds to land in trees some 20ft away?
"At present, providing enough battery life is a problem. But battery technology is improving all the time, and Mr Bryant does not see it as a major obstacle."
/.
/ 01/220226
Clearly this guy doesn't read
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06
Batteries are a limiting problem and may well continue to be for some time to come.
batteries They don't mention what the power usage of this beast is, though they do mention that batteries are still a problem. I'd love to be able to own an electric car that I recharge from a plug in my garage wall, but it still looks like its going to be a while before we get the batteries to allow you to get far.
No France
stories about new electric car technology that I always run across the following (from the article):
"At present, providing enough battery life is a problem. But battery technology is improving all the time, and Mr Bryant does not see it as a major obstacle."
Yea yea....battery technology is improving all the time. Remember when Li Ion batteries were "memory free"? I hate to be cynical, but I'm starting to wonder if we should be looking for answers other than batteries? I'm sure many of you will be quick to interject the "latest and greatest" battery tech but, at this point, I'll believe it when I see it.
That being said though, I fully expect that my four year old son will be driving an electric vehicle when he's 16.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Check out AC Propulsion's T-Zero, all electric car that does 0-60mph in 4.1 seconds, 13 second quarter mile. Only problem is they want USD 200,000 for it.
Does this mean that I can retro fit my Radio Shack particle accelerator kit into my new car engine?
I'm blind and don't realize this has already been posted.
My clock is slow too.
Gotta love those Welch engineering companies. Also I enjoy Welch choirs. Those Welchmen are really quite inventive.
Any car maker still hanging onto the pipe dream of batteries on anything other than a city car is doomed to fail. Hydrogen fuel cells are already gaining an infrastructure in countries like Iceland and Germany and they are the future.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Fission-powered cars?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I never realised motor size was a problem though. We still need to do something about the batteries. If they have a fuel cell that runs on regular petrol, diesel or LPG, that would be a bigger help.
I'll believe you when it beats Michael Schumacher.
If battery is a problem, how much energy does this arrany of motor use?
AC-Propulsion Tzero Eliica
True, the batterys might not last 12 minutes, but just think of what this thing could do on a quarter mile!
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"I know it makes websites not work."
Just to correct the submitter, we are called Welsh not Welch. Just like people from Scotland are Scots, not Scotch (which is a type of booze).
Two year's ago there was a electric indy car that was faster and ran longer that a fuel car. You hear this stuff all the time. Where are these car's? Let's go.
Very clever, using multiple rotors and phases like that.
While running fast is great, and probably essential for mind-share, I wonder about power consumption. A 1:1 gear ratio seems a little short.
I forget the details about electric motors. Doesn't power consumption increase with RPM, and so wouldn't a transmission help increase efficiency?
Efficiency, leading to low power consumption, is the key for an electric passenger vehicle.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
There is nothing revolutionary about a electric motor without permanent magnets. About 70% of all motors used in industry are induction machines (invented by Tesla).
Stepper motors work somewhat like that described in TFA. Every played a pinball games? Every seen a floppy drive. Stepper motors all over the place (typically not fast or powerful, but the principle is the same).
-s
It baffles me why people use phrases like "fast as a Ferrari" as a way of comparison.
Its not hard to make most cars as fast as a Ferrari, Porsche or other neo-exotic. If you think speed is the reason behind them, you have a) never been in one, b) never driven one and c) just don't get it.
Considering there's a big electric drag race scene, speed isn't something thats an issue with electrics. Batteries is.
Put a gas engine on board and hook it to a generator. Output the generator to the electric motor. For 400% more torque, why not? It'd still have a target audience.
Me, I'm worried about different things. That's a lotta current in square waves being fed into coils. Mucho RF interference. Better bring your MP3 player because your radio isn't going to work very well.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"As fast as a Ferrari" is rather vague. Which one? You can buy a modern family sedan faster than many older Ferraris.
It sounds like the only advantage here is that the electric motors will be lighter and smaller, since they don't use large permanent magnets. They could be more powerful, but that would require more...power. Which brings us to the major limitation of electric powered cars, batteries. Which add much more to the weight of a car than the electric motor. So performance like a modern Ferrari in ways other than acceleration is still not going to happen, no matter how fast it is.
I think seriously, that the Ferrari and performance cars like it will be around for a while to come. The alure of these cars is not gone in my opinion, even though they have long been surpassed in speed and acceleration. I don't know how many /.ers have been behind the wheel of a Ferrari, but I would still love to drive one if and equivalent electric counterpart was produced.
That being said, maybe Ferrari will pick up this technology, seriously. They always seem to be inovative to push their cars up to the next notch of performance. And maybe, just maybe, if implemented just right, this will finally remove the stigma of a temperamental Ferrari.
At this rate, three and four-hundred mph cars will be just over the horizon.
Literally, because that only as far as current battery technology will take them.
(Enters Radio Shack, throws white scarf behind him and pulls off driving gloves. "Hello chap, sixteen-thousand of your best button batteries - just put them in the trunk.")
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Sweet 60's here I come baby..yeaaaah. Get ready to see an Electric Aston Martin in the next James Bond movie. OK, may be not the next. I bet Austin Powers would switch over too. Now, this post is a total troll!!!
The High Pressure Fuel Turbopump on the space shuttle has this power-to-weight ratio beat by a mile. The two-stage, eleven-inch diameter by 3 foot long turbine delivers 75,000 horsepower and weighs about 775 pounds. That works out to 100 hp per pound.
Of course, you need a supply of liquid hydrogen and oxygen to run the beastie, but if your really need the power, this is the way to get it.
If LH2 and LOX are too exotic, then try a helicopter gas-turbine. A 600 pound gas turbine can easily provide 5,000 hp.
The counter-argument is that a gas turbine needs a serious transmission, which adds to the weight of the unit. The counter-counter-argument is that these electric motors need batteries or a motor-gen set which also adds (arguably more) weight to the vehicle.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...aren't exactly a new idea, are they? We've been using them for years in RC models, for example. I'm pretty sure that they work as described in the article: a series of pulses go sequentially to the coils arranged around the motor. Sure, they're expensive, but they're soooo fast and efficient. Sounds like these guys have just made a bigger one and are looking for some publicity...
Yawn.
i.e. I'll be too cheap to give him $900/gallon for gas for a REAL car. Let him drive a golfcart instead
But wow, that'd be *cool* :)
--
Toby
http://www.duemotori.com/articoli.php?sid=6211 Those of you who watch Fifth Gear probably saw this in action. Even though Roger Moore was driving it, it's still cool. I hope this new one is going to be a little cheaper and not another million dollar "also ran".
When Electric cars become commen place , the national grids i imagine will need to have a serious overhaul due to the added requierments for extra power . . /requierment
If we dont move away from fuel sources such coal gas oil etc then we may have just as much poloution albeit more centralised
I will have to check into that , but i imagine charging up a battery for one of these things will seriously hike the electricity bill
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
There is a subsidiary of Borealis called
Chorus Motors doing comparable things.
They are currently in trials with Boeing
on using the things to taxi airplanes around.
See http://www.chorusmotors.gi/
Anyone remember those Fisher-Price "Power Wheels" when you were a little kid? Imagine if it had one of these babies in it.... even better than this new fad of miniature motorcylces.
They had a car on techtv about 3 years ago now made by an american car company that is FASTER than a ferrari and can easily beat the ferrari off the line because its lighter. Its an amazing car and I am sure you can find it by googling electric super car.
My local Subaru dealer is The Welch Group (with the 'c'). Obviously they're interested in high performance and powerful vehicles, and they do have several other companies in the group as well as the car dealerships. I was wondering what I'd missed when I went in to get my Scooby serviced the other day...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
A motor without bulky permanent magnets? Like your car's starter motor, you mean? Like the AC/DC brush motors used in sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric drills and so forth? {Clocks obviously use synchronous motors; electric fans and central heating pumps use induction motors, but a lot of appliances still do use brush motors.} None of these motors need permanent magnets, they use an electromagnet polarised by the power source. And since the armature and stator magnets reverse their polarities together with the power supply, the motor will turn the same direction whichever way around you connect the power leads, or even on an alternating current supply.
..... all the electromagnets are standing still, obviating the need for any brushes, you can switch them electronically with great big chunky FETs; the switching rate determines the speed of rotation, and the duty cycle determines the maximum available torque.
Or what about like a variable-reluctance stepper motor, where the steel armature lines itself up between the energised coils on the stator? That's the principle I'm betting on it using
Come back when you've invented something that nobody has invented before. Then it'd be news.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
A few weeks ago there was a British team that wanted to break the electric car speed record (by driving 252 mph over a distance of at least 1 kilometer). They said that a geared car can achieve 100 mph in a few seconds but their rate of acceleration falls away much more quickly compared to the acceleration of this electric car that can accelerate past the 300 mph mark. Also, electric vehicles have, theoretically at least, infinite torque (at 0 velocity).
I just RTFA and it's a news report. Absolutely useless. I want to know if this is a useful motor. I want to know how much power it draws, I want to know how much power it delivers at a reasonable driving speed, eg 100km/h (60 mph).
Another electric car which may be of interest is the Venturi Fetish:r st-production-electric-sports-car-022314.php
http://www.venturi.fr/us/fetish/specs/specs.php3
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/venturi-fetish-fi
The problem is that it costs as much as a house. http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
There is already a prototype car that exists with really impressive specs (you can even buy it if you want):
e .htm
0 to 60 mph: 4.1 s
1/4 mile: 13.2 s
Range at 60 mph: 100 miles
Check it out here: http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_hom
Did you hear about the Toyota hybrid recall that kept stalling because its internal computer didn't know when to switch from electric to gas? Over 33 of them have been found at fault but almost 44,000 have been sold this year. That's not a recall, Ford is the king of recalls. Engine stalling vs. car blowing up. Your call.
Peace out, homies.
One of the big things with electric power in general is the high low end torque. It's nothing spectacular to have an electric car with no gears, they had them in the 50s. Of course, in production you'd have at least 2 gears so you can make use of that torque when you're cruising on the highway.
Maybe instead of a large number of batteries, they could use a Diesel-Electric Hybrid. much like trains do. I'm sure it would be a more practicle solution than thousands of pounds of batteries.
"...welch engineering..."
What's next... Scottish Poetry? English Cooking?
Li-Ion IS memory free.
Every battery technology wears out eventually, but the gradual decrease in capacity isn't memory. Memory is an effect that only shows up in a specific type of NiCD batteries, and only with very precise charge/discharge cycles, of exactly the same length.
From what I heard, even on NiCD, the memory effect happens exactly in two places: Satellites, and laboratories. And even labs had trouble accurately reproducing it.
Batteries can suffer from voltage depression due to overcharge, but that's not memory either.
Some of the early land speed records were set by electric cars. www.thehistoryof.net/the-history-of-automobiles.ht ml That's not the big deal. If I don't have to go very far, I can go really fast in an electric car.
The big issue is efficiency. The article totally doesn't mention this motor's efficiency. And as for the guy's faith in improving batteries; bah. We've been working hard on batteries for a long time and there are no great breakthroughs in sight.
Not sure if they mean that there are plans or they have a plan to make the plans...
Please please PLEASE label them as such. For the love of God and the sake of cyclists - who need to line their metal bike frame right on the telltale loop wound in the pavement, it's the only way to get the light to change at intersections when there's no cars.
I'd hate to think of what happens to my bike frame and its passenger when the loop in the road starts inducing much field in the frame... I love a good science demo as much as the next person, but this is sadistic!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Who says batteries will limit this motor? I have images of a bumper car/dodgem style setup... could look a little ugly though.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Some of the advances in technology that have occurred in the last five decades have been really stunning. The advances in chips and computers seem to be the most obvious, but it's almost equally unbelievable what's happened with magnets and motors.
In the early 1900s the development of small, lightweight fractional-horsepower electric motors that ran on ordinary house current paved the way for a revolution in home appliances. The first "vacuum cleaners" were trucks that drove up to houses with long vacuum hoses. The idea of a self-contained portable vacuum cleaner that you could plug into the wall and push around was revolutionary...
Now, a Toyota Prius has an SEVENTY-horsepower electric motor in it that's not much all that much bigger or heavier than that in those first home vacuum cleaners. Well... than a one-horsepower motor on a lathe or drill press, anyway.
My life is full of incredibly tiny yet powerful motors like the ones that make little those little R2-D2 noises as they zoom the lens on my digital camera.
I'm amazingly ignorant of how all this electromechanical techonology works. I hear words like "neodymium magnets" but I certainly have no idea why neodymium would be good for magnets... or where in the world neodymium is mined and whether it's a strategic resource like the cobalt that was so important in alnico magnets...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A revolutionary motor just rusting in an old abandoned building. Who is John Galt?
electric cars that will make them as fast as a Ferrari....
when dropped out of a plane
If people would warm up to the idea of a little trailer with a gas generator for the occasional over-the road trip we could have a workable solution for many peoples needs.
For those that don't know, Wales is a county (like a state or province) in England.
Get your own free personal location tracker
There is a lot of discussion here saying that the real limiting factor is the batteries, not the motor. However batteries are OK at the moment for storing energy - not as good as storing the energy in a carbohydrate, but OK. The real problem is that the energy has to come from somewhere in the first place, then be delivered to the battery. Imagine a Friday night when everyone wants to refuel, waiting no longer than 5 minutes for it to complete. The power required to do this is immense, and currently would not be feasible. Overnight charging would be fine for many people, but there will always be occasions when you'd get caught out.
The energy would still need to come from somewhere too, the most likely candidate being, you guessed it, oil.
The best solution at the moment is a clean, efficient diesel engine. This has the advantages that you can put biodiesel in it without modification, and the entire infrastructure is already there. Until we find an environmentally-friendly and cheap way of generating electricity in the quantities required to run cars, talk of motors and batteries is just noise.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
I am a bike rider myself and I can generally spot the loop without any problems. Usually it has a lot of rubber sealent smeared around on the road surface beside the sawcut. I have seen pictures of lines or pictures painted into the road surface which make the loops easier to find. I think this is a good idea.
I only use steel frames and I don't know what happens with Aluminum ones.
Out here in Australia one would first have to pursuade riders to "think like a vehicle" which they are not taught to do. For me, this is a more important issue at the moment.
I'd hate to think of what happens to my bike frame and its passenger when the loop in the road starts inducing much field in the frame.Agreed, the suggestion was made in jest.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The AC Propulsion Tzero has been blitzing internal combustion engined cars for several years now. They recently switched it to li-ion batteries making it even lighter, faster and now with a 300 mile range.
Deleted
Using four motors to overcome the same inertia/friction wouldn't take much more power than using one motor to do it. The power would be "spread out."
If each wheel had an separate motor that could make traction better, make control better, add redundancy in case of a motor failing, etc.
The problems that I see with having multiple motors are:
1. Several well-tested techologies for taking power from one motor to 2 or 4 wheels as needed already exist
2. More breakdowns (even if each breakdown is not as serious)
3. Coordination between motors
4. Is building 4 small motors more expensive than 1 big motor?
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
The oil guys I can see (peeking through the tin foil). But the car guys? This could be a motor for just another car. They don't care if it's powered by cow farts, as long as they sell you the car at a profit.
Unplug the batteries people, electric motors are for Sonicare toothbrushes and cheap golf carts.
We are barking up the wrong energy tree.
Bicycle generators [1] are nowhere near as efficient with their permanent magnets. My 110UKP (yes, really) German hub dynamo scrapes 60% efficiency at 15mph and gets worse at higher speeds.
[1] still alternators; they make AC
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Similar article (since the link is slashdotted) here.
-Adam
Sure, a higher power/weight electric engine capable of operation over a wide spectre of speeds is useful. It is not, however, the thing an electric car needs the most to be competitive.
It's *already* the case that an electric motor is equally strong, or stronger, than a equally heavy internal combustion engine.
The problem for electric motors is *energy*storage*, typically batteries. With todays tech 400kgs of batteries can store *maybe* a tenth of the energy in a tank of petrol weighing a tent of that, meaning it's 100 times less effective for storing energy.
To add insult to injusry the 40kg petrol-tank can trivially be refilled in a minute or two, while the battery-pack weighing ten times as much and storing a tenth of the energy, needs hours at best to approach full.
This one?
It sounds great, but:
"The Eliica needs 10 hours of recharging, but it can use your normal power connection. The range is great for a pure electric car - at more than 200 miles.
it isn't for heavy drivers.
There's that irrational prejudice I was talking about above.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
We've got the electric motor to make the car go. Do we have the power source to juice it up? How much electricity does it take? Will a few fuel cells do the trick? How about some batteries? How long will the car drive? That's what really counts.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Any product that people are willing to pay $20K+ for is going to be as feature-rich as the manufacturers can make it, which dictates complexity.
Electric cars have (AFAIK) the following differences with gas cars:
- no transmission (reduced complexity);
- motors at the wheels (no U-joint, but bigger wheel wells);
In addition, if there's a fuel cell or battery (vs. electric power from a piston engine):
- no engine cooling system (reduced complexity);
- battery storage can be any configuration (more design flexibility);
- more maneuverable (no u-joint, no heavy engine, weight can be more evenly distributed);
- probably greater weight (batteries are notoriously heavy);
- vastly fewer moving parts (reduced complexity);
Am I missing big stuff?
Anywhere there's 'reduced complexity', that usually means 'cheaper' and 'more reliable'.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
...motorcycle speedometers are notoriously inaccurate, so a bike at an indicated 60mph may indeed be going faster than a car at an indicated 60mph.
I'd assume a street car would be outfitted with just one.
Not if GM has their way.
Current electric cars have only one motor
That's because current electric cars are basically just retrofitting an electric motor into an existing design.
- No heavy magnets
- avg torque x RPM range
- So , no gears to mess with
The downside is that these motors suck power like anything. I'm actually seeing two seater electric cars on the roads here - Reva classe. It is a decent city car and they are working on a methanol fuel cell design. It really screams rich geek (which explains why there's no back seat).The real issue around here is not the start problems - but driving them in rain or sleet , battery life and lack of repair shops. Speed has very little to do with the lack of their popularity.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Hopefully the major oil/gas manufacturers will allow the electric cars to flourish and not scuttle the competition !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The motor isn't that much of a problem. It's the batteries. Nice to know that there's a miniature motor that can transform the output of a nuclear power plant into movement. But how do you transport all that energy?
I've seen a similar concept in perpetual motion ideas.
In essence, it's balancing a pair of rings of electromagnets - in prime number sums, say an outer ring of seven and an inner ring of five - and using a PIC and a timing sensor to decide which should be on and which should be off. In practice, this is preprogrammed in the PIC, but works out to be an "on" pulse at the most efficient point of forward (or reverse) motion. This stuff's pretty easily precalculated by a computer, but one can make a permanent magnet mock-up and trial-and-error test it for hobbying.
Of course, a yoke would be necessary on each electromagnet (made thin, maybe 1mm in thickness), to direct the flux and ensure that the magnets' interference with each other is kept to inner ring--outer ring.
If it goes up to 2500 RPM, and is efficient as they claim, then they've probably worked out a way to either work around inductance issues, or use them to advantage (either using an DAC and a cap and time the circuits' "bounce" to coincide with then next "on", or recapturing the "off" backflow as useful current).
Hm. I wonder if you could make it brushless by using a pair of PICs for independant timing and using a static inductor coupling for generating current flow. (does physical rotation affect inductance coupling?)
I think I'll go build a prototype. This sounds like a few pretty good ideas.
Who the hell modded this bugger up? Someone with out a driving license.
Next time you get in the car, have a look at the ENGINE RPM just before the car starts moving, you will notice that it is several THOUSAND RPM, even though the wheels are not moving. There is not a 1:1 ratio gearbox from the engine to the wheels.
I know its for Nerds, but surely we are expected to understand SOMETHING about how mechanical devices work.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Reading Matthew Wald's article in the May 2004 issue of Scientific American and Joseph Romm's book The Hype About Hydrogen totally changed the way I think about emmissions and alternative fuel vehicles. It turns out that the life cycle emissions of an EV (which include the emissions from the power plant) can be MUCH higher than we normally think. An EV might actually create more pollution than a hybrid if you live in an area, as I do, where coal fired power plants provide your electricity. In an area where combined cycle natural gas turbines are used to make electricity, the EV would be cleaner.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
We might as well ask Detroit to design vehicles that don't fall apart.
Will the power be measured in BSP (Brake Sheep Power)? :)
:))
(I'm half welsh, I'm allowed to make sheep jokes
the motor provides enough torque at one revolution per minute to put a vehicle into motion
A turbine needs another motor to start it spinning before it can provide any torque. As you say, turbines don't have it beat because they need a serious transmission, bigger than a conventional engine.
You can bet these babys will have them. http://www.i4u.com/article1405.html Must stop drooling over that....
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Although not pure electric, the Toyota Volta was the first hybrid supercar. 408 horsepower out of a 3.3 liter V6 Synergy Drive.
More than 400 miles on a 13.7 gallon tank isn't bad for a car that does 0-60 in 4 seconds.
http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/future/volta.html
I'd love to see this new engine from Welsh Engineering in a Lotus, although I'd never be able to afford one, it'd be an incredible car.
Someone that knows how to give up.
And how to convince others that giving up is smart.
Brings back memories of reading a short story in a science fiction anthology that my grandmother gave to me as a child, involved a not-so-distant future where fuel is still being rationed, main character's driving along in his boat-of-a-car, smiling at all the people putting along in their miniature Japanese compacts. Gets home and we find the car's electric, the sound of the roaring engine provided by loudspeakers. Twist of the story is that at the end, the guy pulls out a crank and starts manually recharging the car, looking at the million or so revolutions required to recharge it from that brief 10 minute jaunt down the road and reflecting that it was worth it just to see the look on his neighbors' faces.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Would like to see some pictures or drawrings.. Anyone can make claims.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Reminds me of how the Big 3 stalled any efforts for decent rail lines in Detroit.
http://www.commutercars.com/
This fancy new motor sounds exactly like a stepper (or step) motor, which has been around for at least half a century. Stepper motors are known for their high torque capabilities. They usually have a low maximum speed (RPM) due to the time it take for each phase to fire and move. I assume they found a way around this.
Another neat feature is that when one phase is left on, it acts like a brake.
You'll find one in your inkjet, laser and dot matrix (I know you still have one) printer, and flatbed scanners too.
Unlike the induction motors found in practically every washing machine, refrigerator and air conditioner on the planet?
Yeah we can get a shit-load of power. Once we figure out a way that we could get it for more then 25 seconds, and once we get a battery to propell the thing that would weigh less than 700lbs, we'll be in business.
I'm wondering if they accually have a prototype yet, or is all this just on paper? Seems like they'd have more info.
Or do you think it could be a way to get money out of the oil industry? I say that because it seems like they wouldn't tell anyone about it until they worked all the problems out.
Put a gas engine on board and hook it to a generator.
Indeed, to give us a hybrid with pure electric traction. It's nothing new, but the concept has been waiting in the wings for really good electric motors to appear, since really good gas engines and generators to supply the power already exist.
The Toyota Prius is a very popular hybrid, but there are an awful lot of compromises involved in its parallel-powered 88%-electric approach (elec 67 / gas 76 HP). The Honda Accord Hybrid is even worse at 6.8% electric (elec 15 / gas 240 HP), so much so that it doesn't even provide the main attraction of hybrids, namely better mpg in cities than on highways. (Same applies to the Honda Civic Hybrid and all the others that use Honda hybrid tech, which includes some US brands.)
Motors like the one in the article seem to offer a good hope of viable pure electric traction powered by maximum-efficiency diesel engines, or gas turbines perhaps for motor racing applications. With the cost of gas going stratospheric, this is very good news.
These are pretty common in the control industry. They are much lighter, but I'm not clear on whether regenerative braking would still work. Compared to DC brush or brushless motors, they traditionally don't work so well at temperature extremes, or when something gums up the works a little. Perhaps these guys are going to come up with a better solution to these problems.
N. Tesla's original AC motor!
Everything else is applied physics and control optimization...
you have perpetual motion
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Will the cabins of the cars be EM-shielded to protect me from the road, or will my health insurance just skyrocket? Seriously though, putting humans inside of powerful magnetic fields on even just a daily basis is not the best idea.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Since many years electric high speed trains exist that drive 400 km/h or even more, having 8000 kW and more of power (in total, of course, not per motor). Also, the power/weight ratio of electric motors is far better than with combustion engines. So it was not really a problem of building fast electric cars motor wise.
They don't provide much detail, but it sounds like a switched reluctance motor. These have an iron rotor with poles that are attracted to stator coils in succession. They tend to have high torque ripple, but very high torque. A good controller can take the torque ripple out electronically (we've done this where I work) or you can add more poles with different phase to smooth things out. All they've done then is make a really big SR motor. Nothing much to see here really.
One of the advantages of technology such as this is in decoupling energy generation and use. At the moment energy storage systems (batteries, flywheels, CAES etc) are not up to the demands that we make of a car (though some are getting close). What this lets you do is have a small engine that can run at its peak efficiency all the time, connected to one of some energy storage system to act as a buffer, which in turn connects to the motors. The engine doesn't have to rev up and down, and doesn't need to be big to produce all the power in one go, while the batteries don't need to store hundreds of miles of current.
I am not nearly as excited about the development of new electric motors as I would be if they announced the development of revolutionary new batteries to power them...
I think you're mixing up several factors and then throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
Sure, only a small proportion of electricity is generated currently by environmentally "green" methods, but that's not because there are insurmountable technological problems. The green energy sources are plentiful, and the main objections that often get presented are far from being showstoppers (eg. energy storage and overhead capacity are both easily addressed by pumping water uphill into reservoirs during the night). Instead, the main problem is that it would hurt existing vested interests economically, and politicians do not have the will to stir things up and do the right thing.
You don't need to solve that political problem before you put electric vehicles on the road though. They'll be passing their power generation problems back to the power plants which are inherently more efficient anyway, and even if only 7% of grid power in Texas is green, that's still a 7% bonus.
Electric vehicles on the road right now is a good start. It doesn't require waiting for all the ills of the world to be solved first.
Ok a Motor with a better power to weight ratio is dandy and all, but the real problem is powering the motors. Battery tech has always been the limiting factor.
Power to weight may not be the most important factor either in motor development. Electric Motor weight is not really that much of an issue. Dwarfed by the weight of the batteries.
How about efficiency numbers. Permanent magnet motors seem like the get half the repulsive force for free. Do away with the magnets and dont you have to use your current to provide both the force on the rotating and stationary elements?
Even home-built models can be fast. The problem is range. Battery technology essentially sucks.
Cheaper (deep cycle lead-acid) batteries are heavy, charge relatively slowly, and don't store anywhere near as much energy-per-pound as gasoline. They have to be changed out after about 500 - 700 charge cycles.
Moderately priced (flooded NiCads) are somewhat lighter, and last forever (life of vehicle). They have moderately better range for their weight, but still charge slowly.
Expensive (Lithium Ion, Nickel metal, other "exotics") can be used to give range because of their higher density and lighter weight, but at a cost that is often 3X the price of a new Honda.
Fuel cells take a long time to "warm up," and are expensive.
Hybrids -- well, they're not really electric nor non-polluting, are they?
When you consider that as little as 10%-20% of the energy in gasoline is applied to the tires, and electric vehicles can be as high as 70%, you realize that batteries are a very poor way of storing energy.
One more thing: Neither the DC nor AC motors presently used in electric vehicles has permanent magnets. The DC motors are series wound motors capable of 6000 RPM. The AC models often can go over 10000, allowing them to be used with only one ratio to the wheels. Neither can be considered bulky; a "large" dc motor is 18 inches long with a 9 inch diameter. The AC motors are often about the size of a coffee can.
Also, check out the tzero.
First person who mentions putting generators on the wheels, or a windmill on the roof shall be shot.
It's linked from the front page.
ACP Press release
An actual long distance trip.
You're right about it being a toy, it's there to prove range, performance and to make a bundle of money for the builders, sportscars have *much* bigger margins than mass manufacture vehicles.
Slightly more practical and comfortable is the UEV Spyder
EV UK have a load more information on electric vehicles.
My own petrol car only gets 240 miles to a tank BTW.
Deleted
(or at least three) companies working on or who already have a hot new electric motor. We've seen other ones on slashdot (a year ago?).
Where's the battery advance? I'm asking that rhetorically, as I don't think there is anything real to report, silver bullet-wise, on batteries, and I'm worried that there won't be -- that fuel cells are the only hope.
Somebody PLEASE tell me I'm wrong and shoot us a URL.
Cool, I can use it in my flying car! (I'll lose my karma for this).
..we already have plenty of electric vehicles, no storage required. They're called trains. The real problem is a security/economic one: if you supply electric power to the roads, how do you charge for it?
Maybe some clever geek can figure out how to do it, and make their fortune.
Variable frequency drive systems provide for more efficient use of a polyphase induction motor. Induction motors have no permanent magnets, and rely on the use of currents induced by a rotating magnetic field into a conductive rotor.
I've been googling for far too long, but I knew I'd seen this before... and I found it... at Chorus Motors, which is a polyphase variably switched drive system.
--Mike--
"At present, providing enough battery life is a problem. But battery technology is improving all the time, and Mr Bryant does not see it as a major obstacle."
The real challenge with electric cars is the power supply.
We already have electric motors that will give an electric car the performance of any production car you like. The problem is that those motors require lots of electric power -- 746 watts per horsepower, if the motor is 100% efficient (a good motor is in the high 90s)
So, if you have a 98% efficient 100 HP motor at each wheel, you'll need a battery that can supply a little over 300 kilowatts (somewhat less than a third of a megawatt).
I won't diss the motor -- it's a great device. The article is long on hyperbole and short of fact, however. This motor is not the solution. It'll help by making the design somewhat less complicated, but we won't have practical electric cars until we have a practical power supply.
Short term, hybrids are the answer. Fuel cells are the next step (whether they are fueled by hydrogen or hydrocarbons). After that, who can tell? Mister Fusion, anyone?
The way they describe it with the electric pulses and such it sort of sounds like a Mag-Lev train system bent into a loop.
There's nothing revolutionary about a motor with no permanent magnets. PM-less DC motors have existed for decades, using electromagnets in the place. Reluctance motors (?) are similar: they have a multipronged rotor, slightly offset from the magnetic poles, that delivers force by pulsing the electromagnets in series.
More recently (still at least a decade) AC motors have been growing in popularity, and they work on the principle of magnetic induction. Of course, it's difficult to start one if the rotor is completely demagnitized as it prefers that there's at least a tiny bit of a field, but nontheless...
Jw
My classmate Al Cocconi has been building fast electric cars for years (http://www.acpropulsion.com./ Both his T-0 and the Venturi Fetish ($705,000) can beat Ferraris. Al helped develop the GM EV-1 which is also pretty darn fast and was in production briefly. See the article on tech cars including the Fetish in The March 2005 IEEE Spectrum, page 27. (been there done that got T-shirt)
This sounds just like an AC induction motor, which is nothing new.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_motor
Seeing as the article lacked technical details or links, I'm left with the impression its seven ac motors built on one shaft. Whippee-doo.
A slot-car type power source would have too
many problems with debris or rain in the
slot, lane changing, etc. So you need a non-
contact way to get power into the car.
To extend the range of electric cars you can
build inductive chargers into roads. The car
can transmit an identifying signal (think RFID)
that would do two things: identify who to bill
for the electricity used, and limit the time
the inductor is running to only when a car that
can use it is present.
The inductors would be spaced along roads so that
cars could get a charge while in motion. Since
the efficiency of an induction coupling depends
on the two sets of wires being close to each
other, the power transfer will happen in short
pulses as a car passes over each coil. If the
batteries can't handle the high pulses, you
would need to supplement with a capacitor to
smooth out the power transfer.
Note that an inductive coupling means you
will be operating an electric motor if the
road coil and car coil are offset. So you
can get an actual push or pull on the car
(linear motor), as well as transferring power
to the car's batteries.
The T-Zero electric car was already demonstrated as being faster than any Porsches or ferraris than you can throw at it:
0 /21/cx_dl_1021vow.html
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/collecting/2003/1
The reply was largely jest, too - I can't imagine these things in place. Put them in parking lots.
My ancient Peugeot tourer sets these things off like crazy. My Cannondale road seems a bit tougher, but I could be dreaming.
Around here, the club roadies who can't wait at a light are in the same league as the motorists who gun their engine to prove just how inconvenient it was to have to wait a half second for the bike to swerve around the storm drain...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Bloody marvellous! an end to gears and that excuse for engineering that is the clutch. There was something like this in Japan but i think the problem was the car had extra wheels to give the extra torque. It just seems like electric cars are going to be the replacement not because of environmental/resource issues but because they're just going to be better.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I knew there had to be a catch: battery life.
These motors draw so much power that no practical (small, cheap, safe) modern battery can power them for very long.
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm
:-( Maybe you could ask them to put it up again.
But I see they only have the Corvette race up now. They used to have a Porsche and Ferrari
Check out the new Tzero electric sports car. It beats a Ferrari or a Corvette easily:
m a nce.htm
http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.ht
http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_perform
If you have the $85,000 to spare you can order one already.
Isn't that where fuel cells and metal hydrides come in? Fuel cells allow conversion of liquid fuel into electricity at high efficiency; metal hydrides show the promise of being able to store hydrogen in a safe and reasonably dense fashion.
Nonaggression works!
Other than the claim of 400% MORE TORQUE!, the article in no way describes a revolutionary electic motor.
From the article:
"The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets.
Instead it relies on transmitting electric pulses across up to seven rotors, arranged in different phases. These are "fired up" in turn, much like the pistons of an internal combustion engine."
Electric motors without permanent magnets are not a new thing. Wound rotor AC motors are one example. Shunt wound DC motors are another example.
I doubt that the new motor actually has seven rotors as the article states. The rotor is the spinning, inner, part of the motor. Seven of these would basically be seven seperate motors. I suppose it really would be revolutionary if the developers were pulsing current to seven rotors (assumedly the seven rotors are mechanically connected to make one drive shaft) and wound up with a system more efficient than conventional designs. I rather doubt that is the case though.
I'll give the Welsh guys the benefit of the doubt and figure that they actually have done something cool. I'd sure like to know what it is.
Yes, the energy to recharge the batteries would come from oil. But the oil that is no longer being used to power the car would be instead routed to the power generator and converted to electricity, and then moved to your car. What I want to see, and haven't seen (nor really looked), is what kind of losses do you encounter using oil in your car (refinement, transportation, distribution, etc.) vs the losses in generating electricity and getting that into and out of your battery. Pulling information out of my butt, it seems to me that you are using significantly more energy to refine oil into gasoline and move it to your car, and then lose 70% of the energy to heat, than you are by transporting oil to the generator, generating electricity, moving it over high-voltage lines to your house, charging your batteries, and taking the energy back out of the batteries. Economies of scale kick in on the oil transportation; you can transport a bunch at a time, to more limited locations.
"eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuwwww!"
Combining the new "artificial noisemakers" with corporate sponsorship will spawn a whole new breed of advertising. Fans of the new electric racing cars will hear this:
"eeeeeeeeeeeaskyourdoctorifafreesampleofviagrais rightforyouuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwww!"
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Skipping over all the issues over energy storage that are leading to the success of the hybrid design....
How is this motor new? They don't describe how multiple rotors are connected. They don't even mention the basic motor technology.
Not having permanent magnets is not a selling point in Real Motors. Permanent magnet motors are only used in very small, low-power applications--tape player, model car, windshield washer pump, hard disk motor.
Replacing the permanent magnet with an electromagnet lets you build a MUCH bigger motor. And how you connect it (the field or stator coil) to the rotor coil lets you do neat tricks. It's the motor that made electric rail possible. Same thing is in those old "Mixmaster" mixers, rigged in such a way that they keep constant speed under almost any load. Same sort of motor in your vacuum, blender, power drill, and so on. They're called "DC Machines", but because of the electromagnet, they can run off AC as well (0-60 Hz, it says in the old Mixmaster manual), and are also called "Universal machines".
But with modern solid-state controls we can do better using various kinds of "AC machines", neither of which use permanent magnets either. An induction machine is your basic steady-speed AC workhorse motor--tablesaw, drill press, washing machine, drier, window fan, fridge or AC compressor, furnace fan. They're weak at start, so tend to come up to speed slowly. An induction machine is basically a lump of aluminum in a changing magnetic field. Set it up with 3-phase AC and you don't need anything at all, set up 3 coils and put a coffee can in the middle and watch it turn. Change the frequency of the AC and you change the speed. For better power, replace the lump of aluminum with actual wound coils shorted together--no brushes, no commutator, no permanent magnet.
Next is the "synchronous machine", which can be built with a permanent magnet, but you generally don't. You do need sliprings or brushes with this one, as you provide power to a rotating electromagnet. Your car's alternator (and some bikes) use one of these--by adjusting the current through the rotating electromagnet, you adjust the generated voltage. (That's how your charging system regulator works--by changing the amount of power actually generated.)
You get bags of torque from a synchronous motor, but the problem is getting one to start turning. The classic way is to start it as an induction motor, then engage the rotating electromagnet when it is at speed. If you just start bashing 60 Hz AC into one already in synchronous mode, it will just vibrate, as the magnetic field (still thinking 3-phase) are zipping by faster than it can turn to catch up.
But with recent (last 10-15 years) improvements in power switching semiconductors, we no longer have to settle with 60 Hz AC. And, on DC supplied vehicles, we have to invert to power a synchronous machine anyway. So, you build a frequency-controlled inverter, so you can start the motor from near-zero Hz and bring it up to whatever speed you want--the synchronous nature of the beast will "lock" it to the speed from the inverter. (And you can watch the power on your drive circuits to see if you are trying to drive it too hard and are about to lose synchronization.) You can do that trick with an induction machine too, but an induction machine relies on the stator windings to induce a magnet in the rotor, so it's not so good at very low frequencies. On the other hand, it starts easily, so you don't need to match frequency to motor speed, it will just "slip". (The difference between syncrhonous speed and actual speed is called slip.)
One final trick: I've been assuming you've got a 2-pole motor: One north, one south around the outer circle at any given time. At 60 Hz, this gives you 3600 RPM--each time the voltage makes a complete cycle, the rotor has to turn to follow. Another poster hit on the right basic idea for electr
Actually the problem is roughly as follows:
1. An efficient and affordable motor with the highest power to weight ratio possible.
2. Using a high-energy density power source. This energy source would be easy to refill and have the interesting property that it is extremely stable when not in use, but can very rapidly release that energy when needed. This same energy source needs to be minimally dangerous when it becomes a component in 60 to 120 mph kinetic interactions with large moving objects (and brick walls).
3. If the energy carrier is completely used up as it is used then it needs to burn *very* efficiently to avoid pollution problems.
4. If the energy carrier simply dumps its potential energy load into the motor, it needs to be very easy to reload, recycle and have minimal chemical impact on the environment when disposed of / cleaned up in accident etc.
5. All of this should be affordable.
6. Hopefully a non-proprietary solution could be found so that very few monopolies would be created (except natural monopolies that you get from increasing economies of scale of course).
These are very difficult engineering problems to solve. Probably a couple breakthrough inventions would move advance us rapidly. From an engineering standpoint it feels like the same kind of breakthrough as the transistor. A "smart fuel" would help a lot. Perhaps a nano-scale solution i s needed.
I'm just a software engineer with a decent general engineering background in physics and chemistry, but it seems that we are a long way off from the absolute physical limits of the problem.
Let me see if I can propose some possible solutions here:
1. Many types of mechanical and electrical motors have plenty of torque / max rpm / power etc to do the job as long as we feed them plenty of juice. The kind of juice that we would get from a primary energy source like chemical combustion or nuclear energy release. The motor problem is probably not the limiting issue and I would expect that generational increases in motor efficiency would simply reinforce this.
2. Okay, so we need lots of juice to drive this thing. The only types of motors I'm aware of are combustion (reciprocating and rotary), electric (many types), turbines (gas, steam, various propellants) and jets (pulse and direct).
Since I'm not a mechanical engineer and I don't have the time or space to visit all of these I'll see if I can visit some of the interesting ones.
3. Three motor / fuel combinations seem interesting at this point.
a. Rotary / Hydrogen
Rotary / Hydrogen seems like a nice sweet spot. Though I'm always fascinated by the simplicity and elegance of the rotary engine it hasn't been the commercial success it might have been. This is largely because of the reduced compression level when you use a rotating combustion chamber rather than a reciprocating one.
That was a disadvantage with gasoline / diesel since suboptimal compression levels result in reduced fuel efficiency and decreased power per unit of consumed fuel. It's largely why Mazda decided to stop producing the 13B rotary in the US. US Fed efficiency requirements made it almost impossible to make an affordable rotary until they redesigned the 13B and created the Renisys engine. Unfortunately they produced a butt-ugly body to go around it. (Is anyone else disturbed by the almost total lack of taste and styling in recent body designs??)
Anyway, getting back to the main issue, hydrogen burns most efficiently at a lower compression level. In fact that is the compression level that matches the rotary engines sweet spot almost exactly. So the rotary engine that had a hard time keeping up with Federal efficiency guidelines with hydrocarbon fuels is one of the most efficient and simple motors both in terms of power to weight ratio and stochiometric efficiency.
All you need is a convenient source of hydrogen. Well as Arthur C Clarke once said, "The two most common elements
They've invented the AC induction motor. Apparently, they invented the vector drive, too.
By wrapping coils of wire around Nikola Tesla's body , placing magnets around the grave, and repeating these claims, we hope to have an infinite free source of electric power.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
You mean the SPEEDOMETER of cars are imprecise. This affects cars sold in Germany because of a German law that states a speedometer cannot read below the actual speed. As a result, manufactures of cars sold in Germany add about 5% to the speedometer to insure that even when factors that are out of their control (future tire purchases, tire pressure, age of the measuring equipment) change their cars will still be in compliance with the law.
This affects both motorcycles and cars.
All my life I have carried a disproportionably large portion of the NY economy because of the revenue generating efforts of local and state police in the form of speeding tickets. As a result, I got interested in EXACTLY how fast I am traveling. Using a GPS (which is damned accurate) and the correct size tires, I have found that making generalizations about speedometer accuracy (such as motorcycles will be more accurate) to be impossible. Each vehicle has its own inaccuracies (which change at different speed ranges) at different ranges. Oddly, my Toyota Tundra pick up is the most accurate vehicle I own. I am not sure if my Toyota is the most accurate because it is the newest, or because it is a North America only vehicle, and therefore not sold in Germany. My least accurate vehicle is my BMW (which, of course, is sold in Germany). Here is what I found:
2003 Toyota Tundra 30 MPH indicated 29 MPH actual
2003 Toyota Tundra 50 MPH indicated 50 MPH actual
2003 Toyota Tundra 70 MPH indicated 69 MPH actual
1995 BMW 318ti 30 MPH indicated 27 MPH actual
1995 BMW 318ti 50 MPH indicated 46 MPH actual
1995 BMW 318ti 70 MPH indicated 64 MPH actual
1995 BMW 318ti 90 MPH indicated 85 MPH actual
1992 Suzuki Katana 750 30 MPH indicated 33 MPH actual
1992 Suzuki Katana 750 50 MPH indicated 51 MPH actual
1992 Suzuki Katana 750 70 MPH indicated 69 MPH actual
1992 Suzuki Katana 750 90 MPH indicated 92 MPH actual
So this got me thinking, if my BMW is always reading over the actual speed traveled by at least 5%, am I piling miles on 5% more miles than I actually am traveling? The answer is no. My BMW (and I assume any car sold in Germany) actually knows how fast you are traveling, accurately counts the mileage, and inaccurately displays your speed to comply with German law.
If you have any doubt of this, you can check it in three ways:
-Set a GPS to zero. Zero you trip odometer. Check the two for accuracy after you have travel a set distance.
-Any OBD I or OBD II (and I assure OBD III when we get it) will have the speed information available to the car's computer. You can also look at this (and other important information) by purchasing an interface cable and software to connect your laptop or palm to your car.
-My BMW (and many other cars) also have a "on board computer" that calculates fuel mileage, distance to empty, average speed, and clock features. This information all comes from the OBD system. While driving, set the cruise control and reset the average speed. The number that shows up will be the speed you are traveling at the moment.
Posting as the AC I am.
Interesting, how long will it take for all the folks associated with this discovery to silently disappear from the face of the earth, and their discovery to be forgotten forever?
My several rabid electric car friends each had one or two EV-1s during the heyday when GM was testing these units, and swore up and down how great the cars were. In reality the cars were tiny, impractical, yet faster and tighter than most "sports cars" out there (at least consumer models), and GM discontinued them.
As I told my electric car geek friends, if you want to see electric cars in every driveway, try making a minivan or an SUV, or even a simple Nissan Sentra-style point-and-steer econobox.
As long as you keep pushing for this gee-whiz zinger of a sports car, I can only assume your intentions are not as altruistic as you say.
I saw a moddified, electric RX7 (first gen) that beat down a Viper in the quarter mile.
The power has already been there for electrics.
The problem has been battery weight.
The problem with electric cars is not and never has been the motor. The problem is the batteries. Current batteries are too heavy, have a short life (number of recharges), don't hold enough power for a reasonable range, and lose a great deal of their power when cold. And that's not even talking about the environmental problems with batteries -- lead-acid batterries contain (big surprise) lead, which is a hazardous material. Go to any battery recycler and you'll find a hazardous waste site...
The fact is, battery technology has not changed dramatically in the last decade. The improvements have been in small percentages. But for electric cars to be viable requires an order of magnitude improvement.
Don't hold your breath.
in "The motor is revolutionary"?
Strictly I think an object which undergoes revolutions rather than relating to them can only be said to be revolving.
You could perhaps argue that since it is only internal parts of the motor which do the revolving, the motor as a whole is revolutionary in both senses of the word because it uses revolutions to operate.
Throw an Enzo at it.
n t-Angle-Speed-1024x768.htm
The Ferrari Enzo can do 217 m.p.h.
( Hmm... The motor trend test drive, had it pulling away from A Proshe at 192 m.p.h. )
http://www.seriouswheels.com/def/Ferrari-Enzo-Fro
Ferrai Enzo: 0-60 mph 3.3 seconds
1/4 mile 11.2 seconds
Top Speed 217.5 mph
T-Zero The tzero does 0 to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds
They raced the tzero agains a F335. Not even a fast Ferrai.
Yours,
Killmofasta
I think it is law... Every car I've seen in the last 10 years has a switch on the clutch pedal so you can't start it while the clutch is out. Then the drivers manual still says that if you have a manual car stalled on the railroad tracks you should use the starter to get yourself off.
Some cars have a button you can push to bypass the clutch switch. Most don't though.
AC Propulsion, a company dedicated to creating electric vehicles, has had the tZero in development since the mid 90s and actually has a working prototype on the road. I've had the pleasure of riding in this car, and it's FAST!
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
From the article:
At present, providing enough battery life is a problem. But battery technology is improving all the time, and Mr Bryant does not see it as a major obstacle.
Wait a minute. I thought we had a problem in that battery technology wasn't improving. We're looking at running our laptops and pdas on various forms of liquid fuel. So our cars will be electric and our laptops will be gas powered? Or perhaps the inventors are hoping for hydrogen fuel cells to get cheaper (like maybe someone can come up with something other than rare metals to make them out of)
What might be cool is to use this motor in a racing environment, where you have a pit crew to swap out power cells.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Will the coffee can exhaust pipe have to house a 500 watt amplifier to blast out that tortured refried bean fart noise they like so much?
I'm just glad to see that someone has finally come up with a viable alternative to carbon emissions. I'm sure battery power will not be a problem in the future as the article suggests. The only thing we have to worry about now is how environmentally UN-friendly creating more electricity will be(?)
Health Insurance Quotes
There is a timing gear is some cars. Also, cars with a manual distro use an actual gear to turn the distro to deliver the spark. Most cars dont of course use a timing gear but rather a timing chain or belt....doesnt mean they dont exist though does it?
There is a National Electric Drag Racing Association
http://www.nedra.com/
Also, The Tango can go 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. This is designed for commuting, rather than for family traveling. Most cars on the road today are primarily used for commuting. http://www.commutercars.com/
NiCD? Nickel-Carbon-?
Or did you mean NiCad?
So they can build an electric motor with a lot of torque. What else is new?
Prius
Escape Hybrid
Civic Hybrid
If this motor is all it claims to be, it will be excellent for hybrid vehicles. Using a hybrid negates the battery life issue, and there's NOTHING that says that a hybrid can't be designed for performance instead of gas mileage. Using a hybrid technology means you can optimize your engine for pure horsepower and nothing else. No worrying about turbo lag, no need to deal with variable valve timing since the engine will either be on at full speed or completely off. (As opposed to traditional engines where a tradeoff between peak horsepower and overall driveability usually has to be made, unless you use complex workarounds such as variable valve timing and variable nozzle turbochargers.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Why so many posts and not a single mention of that wonderful Welsh activity?
I heard all the same glowing praises about the potential of "electric cars" back in the late 1980s. GM was going to have a nice electric car on the market by 1992, and when I was 16 I hoped I'd have enough money in my mid 20s to buy one. Hydrogen was going to be the saviour, even if battery technology didn't advance. Zero emission vehicles were right around the corner, or so they said...
Well, it's 2005, and we have no electric cars for sale. We have no hydrogen cars for sale. I'm 32, and I'd buy one if there was one to buy: but no such luck. I've waited 16 years for any of their wild and wooly claims to materialize, the ones that were going to happen "within a 3 to 5 years". None ever did.
Electric cars are pure blue sky: just a lot of fluff and hype. The promises today are the same as they were 16 years ago; and no more likely today than they were back then... They may eventually happen one day, but don't hold your breath: they're still decades away.
--
AC
A 10MP digital camera depends on so many non-camera-specific technologies that such technologies would have been developed with or without resistance from the film camera industry.
The #1 issue being storage - Do you really think digital cameras are solely responsible for modern hard drive and flash memory card capacities? Because without large hard drives and memory cards, a 10MP digital camera could not exist.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Electric cars are not going to solve anything regarding CO2 and Kyoto. But it will make a difference r.e. not sending money to arab states which will turn around and use the money to attack us. Not that the arabs are going to be broke anytime soon.
Batteries are an issue. They have limited life and most are toxic.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think the question of which technology uses energy more efficiently has no clear-cut answer. When you consider that more energy is generally used in manufacturing a car than it will use in fuel in its entire lifetime, this sheds a new light on things. We need to ask how much energy is used in manufacturing an electric vehicle (plus the infrastructure needed to run it) versus for an oil-burning vehicle. Diesel engines will happily run for 200,000 miles without needing replacing. I don't think batteries last anything like as long as this at the moment. And with the rate at which Diesel engines are advancing at the moment, my bet is that they will for a long time remain the dominant road-fuel technology they are rapidly becoming.
43 - For those who require slightly more than the answer to life, the universe and everything.
fuel cell conversion efficiences beat the heck out of IC engine. Fuel cell development has reached stage where direct alcohol-gasoline, diesel, vegetable juice, drivers farts, etc. conversion to electricity at rates adequate for expressway cruise speeds is practical. Some 30-40HP(~20kW-40kW) required for a mid sized sedan delivery type vehicle. Go do some hunting with altavista, google, or whatever...
/. readers not familiar, a co-op typically distributes profits back to customers in proportion to the amopunt they spend while adjusting pricing by way of some feedback function, usually a reduction in pricing over time, to minimize the amount of 'dividends' paid out. REI, all credit unions, EMC's, etc are examples of co-ops.
PM AC(pulsed DC with phase & polarity control is AC as far as the motor is concerned) servomotors are efficient but heavy. Control circuitry for, lighter weight, non-PM types is complex but not difficult. 30kW non-PM servo motor, properly designed, will get you many times the steady state HP rating, for acceleration. Relative ot battery type electric cars these only need enough storage to cover peak demands.
Yep, electric cars, unlike flying cars, are just around the corner of time.
In USA, if you want to jump in the market, your best bet is with a three wheeled vehicle. Classified as a motorized cycle, three wheel vehicles are exempt from all those expensive safety regs that make it near impossible for an automobile startup.
There's opportunity here... If the 'green' movement wants to put up some bux and develop a 'low impact(environmental)' electric vehicle it could be done cheaply and return $ to early adopters by way of a sliding, say 6 year, window co-op approach. For
b
When your electric cars paint peels off because of the emmissions from the coal fired plant perhaps you will reconsider you 'politics can go fuck itself' approach.
BTW I agree about Scientific Americans liberal bias of late. They've dumbed it down progressivley over the last 20 years.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How does this car compare to an electric train? Which I can also afford.
The armature may revolve, but this is hardly a revolutionary design. IIRC, GM has been making starter motors without permanent magnets for more than 30 years. In fact, it's hard to find a vehicle which uses a permanent magnet starter motor any more.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The Eliica (electric lithium-ion car) was covered previously on slashdot. It already beats the Ferrari 911 Turbo (0-60mph in 4 seconds, 0-100 in 7). I really like the eight wheels.
Say we do reach the point where electric does become mainstream. Then the local governments are going to rape us even harder with higher property taxes, registration fee, possibly additional taxes, more toll roads, and prices on electricity will most likely go way up since the government will get its revenue from somewhere and the oil companies are going to fight any gas alternatives that threaten their stronghold on the transportation industry.
Do you have some numbers for how much energy it takes to make a car? It seems like I saw 45-50 barrels of oil thrown around to make a typical car. More than that amount is used during the lifetime of a car. Also, some first-gen (american-wise) priuses have reported going more than 200,000 miles on the batteries. And just as diesel engines are improving, so too are batteries and other electricicy storage technologies (like supercapacitors). Though diesels do attract me, as it takes less energy to refine the oil, and you get more energy out of a gallon. It's a double improvement. And your engines last longer, because diesel is a better lubricant, especially bio-diesel.
It sound like these people are claiming to have invented the AC induction motor.
The advantages they were claiming were already possible using a standard AC induction motor in conjuction with a variable frequency drive. This may even be what they are doing.
The problem is still how to store the energy needed to drive it.
Lurking is an art. If you can read this then I have not yet mastered it.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/04030 3080222.htm
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Because we've already noticed. How does this tinfoil crap get modded as 'Insightful' anyway?
*repeated information*
:
0 3080222.htm
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http://www.europositron.com/en/techniques.html
This should step up the issue of power vs. weight.
Further "power" innovations such as this might
take effect soon as well
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/0403
If they achieve this, forget cars, this will change the entire world forever
Cheap water, cheap power, cheap travel,
cheaper food, and an infinitely cleaner world
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Like Colin says, the tzero has been around for a while and accelerates faster than a Ferrari. The video of this being demonstrated is on their website.
Our dear multi-billion dollar friends at Mobil, Exxon, Getty, Hess, Amaco, Chevron, BP and their friends namely G.W. Bush and his pal in Saudi Arabia will make sure this technology doesn't see primetime. Too much to lose.
Stop and go traffic with a turbine car will get you something that makes a Hummer limo look like a Prius.
That's what hybrids are for. During stop and go traffic you will be running from your batteries. The gas turbine will only start for a few minutes every hour to recharge. At high speeds the turbine will run continously.
A gas turbine hybrid design will probably choose to always run a generator with the turbine and drive the wheels with electric hub motors like the one described in the article which doesn't require any transmission. Most current hybrids drive the wheels through a transmission from the internal combustion engine when it's running
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Here's a memory test for the crowd. Popular Science back around the '80's had a poleless electric motor featured on it's cover. Does anyone remember that motor, and any details?
This car manages to beat a Ferrari to 60mph and can go 280-300 miles at 60mph without recharging. That should be plenty for driving around town.
The Chrysler Turbine car:
m l
http://www.turbinecar.com/turbine.htm
http://www.fourforty.com/turbine/
http://www.autospeed.com.au/A_0764/P_1/article.ht
Another way to use a gas turbine would be to use it to generate electricity, which would then drive an electric motor, like trains do.
Also, simple Tesla bladeless turbines might be used in hybrid electric vehicles. See TEBA http://www.execpc.com/~teba/main.html, Phoenix Turbine Builders:
http://phoenixnavigation.com/ptbc/home.htm
"At present, providing enough battery life is a problem. But battery technology is improving all the time, and Mr Bryant does not see it as a major obstacle."
Didn't we just have an article yesterday on how battery life technology was at a near standstill?
I want an update to forza, that lets me put one of these in my Treuno AE86 to replace the Supra Twin Turbo that's already in there. In addition, it should be free. And it should make smoothies to keep my hydrated during endurance races. Said smoothies should come out of my xbox's jewel. Please, get right on that. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Fred Flintstone had a car that could outrun a Porsche and all he used were his feet!
so here's my idea:
forget about running only from batteries for now; take a small, very efficient ICE/diesel(like the one VW used a couple years back to set a world record), hook it to a small battery/alternator/generator/regenerator, use a small fuel tank(5gal or less) and you'd have the F1 cars beat on HP/weight. a small diesel has more than enough torque to spin up a decent alternator, so readily available voltage would be a cinch. imagine a prius with these much better electric motors...
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
2,500 rpm? My bike turns to 11,000 rpm! And has 6 forward gears, will go 250 miles on a tank of gas and do over 180 MPH. All this for under 10 grand, and using a power source that consists of 5 gallons of gasoline (15 bucks to fill it, max). If their engine can do that, and the battery to drive it fits in the space of my gas tank, I'll consider it. But somehow I doubt that they can meet even 50 percent of these specifications.
Electric motors are more efficient than their combustion counterparts, but when driven to their power handling limits, they do heat up. If driven at their redline for too long, they can overheat and fail just like anything else.
If cooling isn't taken into account then this isn't necessarily the great advance it is being touted as. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say very much.
In any case, this would work best in cooler climates where the motors can use air cooling most effectively, and where the batteries last longer.
Totally. As a friend of mine said recently, "Parts equal loss." Some kids at MIT had built some prototypes of small gas turbines to power laptops -- suckers were tiny. Honestly, a couple of small turbines and related peripherals, in addition to a combination of capacitors and batteries, should be able to power a ground commuter vehicle quite well.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
As fast as a Ferrari? If the motor can turn at 2,500 rpm and this is driving the wheel directly, assuming a typical car wheel size of about 15" diameter, this gives just under 112 mph. While not slow by any means, and perfectly in line with current car performance, it's somewhat short of Ferrari speeds. Mere hyperbole. It's a shame, because it's impressive without having to resort to that, but having done so, it makes it seem LESS impressive when you do the maths.
As fast as Ferrari? How about some common sense. The motor is said to be directly driving the wheels w/o transmission, and the motor spins at up to 2500 RPM. Suppose the diameter of the wheel is 16in: 2500 (rotation/min) * 60 (min/hour) * 16*pi (inch/rotation) / 63360 (inch/mile) = 119 MPH. That's the absolute maximum speed with a 16-in wheel. It may accelerate as fast as a Ferrari, but will never run as fast!
This article provides no information what so ever. The motor just sounds like an AC induction motor which isn't new at all.
What's the point?
>>but, seriously, why do so many people try to equate a fun, powerful car with penile size?
Because these things are mating strategies. Chimps and other primates (people) make loud noises in public to attract attention and express dominance in the local group. People now have very complex dominance hierarchies, but the behaviors are still ingrained from the quite recent past when we all lived in small groups just like chimps. Chimps and gorillas yank on branches and throw things around. People rev their engines. But it's all fucked up and nobody understands it because these guys can BUY loud engines/harleys etc. We do it without understanding why, just like all instinctual behavior. Of COURSE it's fun! Being at the top of the dominance hierarchy means you get the most sex, food, places to hang out, and you also get to push around those lower-ranking doofs. And doing these behaviors (revving engines, playing loud music etc) are going to FEEL fun to our brains, because the unconscious part of our mind knows it's going to pay off in mates, food, position etc.
People equate these things with 'small penis' as a shorthand way of saying 'this guy wouldn't even make beta male in a real primate group.'
I have a question for all you folks out there: why don't women ever rev their engines, burn off their tires etc? Nobody talks about "whoa, she must be making up for her tiny vulva" or something.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
The article that I've read doesn't mention current draw so we have no idea what the stored power requirement might be. It might be considerably less (or more) than the current generation of slugs - more data needed.
And there seems to be no mention of the actual power-to-weight ratio, so we don't know how heavy an equivalent IMP motor is going to be. If it's really as lightweight as they claim, the weight savings on the motor itself (esp without the extra lump of metal from a conventional gearbox) might compensate for the battery weight.
With decent torque, vehicle weight won't be as much of a design factor. So I'd like to see something like this for sale in kit form for retrofitting to typical front-wheel-drive compacts. Bypass the new car manufacturers entirely.
- needs a rotating induced field to grab onto, and
- is going to degauss any remnant field in a flash.
You might be thinking of DC generators, which need some remnant magnetism in the field to bootstrap themselves (and can be magnetized backwards, causing all kinds of fun behavior).Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- It lets you use non-petroleum fuels (or no fuel) to run the car.
- It lets you cogenerate with the fuel used to run the car.
- It lets you put the powerplant and the car in different places.
- Given that electric cars require storage, it lets you generate the power and use the power at different times (how big the difference can be depends on how much the battery can store).
All of these features are levers you can use to extract benefits which are unavailable from the current crop of vehicles.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
What we lack is peak generating capacity. I'll bet my pocket protector that there's considerable off-peak generating capacity available even in rolling-blackout territory, and there would be plenty more if there weren't huge difficulties with non-gas fired generation in California (natural gas is getting scarce and the price is going way up). The problem there isn't finding the generators at 2 AM, it's finding the fuel to run them.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I love the environment and all that but there is just to much talk here about fuel economy and batteries. The focus surely should be creating a pure performance vehicle. Economy, solar power etc can wait till the tinkerers have had there fun. My money would be a hybrid format. Say a smallish 150 kW petrol engine (optimised for full power output offcourse), an alternator designed around the op speed of the engine, adaptive energy management/control/distribution system and the all important storage device - Some nice big caps and/or perhaps the next generation lithium ion batteries (ultra fast charge/discharge capabilities). 4W drive naturally. I guess all this lot would be fairly light weight and easily packed flat and close to the road. The only problem is what should the peak power output be. I suspect a 8 second ¼ mile would be adequately scary for the average punter if the frame handles like a Ferrari.
Smart thinking! But I'll go you one better.
Let's put a small windmill, or perhaps solar cells on the roof of the car.
These will produce hydrogen through electrolysis, which in turn will power the clean-running internal compustion engine, which will run a generator to charge the batteries, which will power the wheels.
If my calculations are correct, there may be enough electricity left over to run a small microwave and possibly even a blow-dryer to run the windmill!
But drat! This means the car wil have to carry a supply of distilled water to use in the electrolysis.
We just HAVE to fit hydrogen in there somewhere... Today's science hype demands it.
Can it do 183mph?
/ power/power_per_body_top.htm
http://www.evchargernews.com/CD-A/gm_ev1_web_site
I dream in binary.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.