Ultracapacitor Bus Recharges At Each Stop

TechReviewAl writes "A US company and its Chinese partner are piloting a bus powered by ultracapacitors in Washington DC. Ultracapacitors lack the capacity of regular batteries but are considerably cheaper and can be recharge completely in under a minute. Sinautec Automobile Technologies, based in Arlington, VA, and its Chinese partner, Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, have spent the past three years demonstrating the approach with 17 municipal buses on the outskirts of Shanghai. The executive director of Sinautec touts the energy efficiency of this approach: 'Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel.'"

Comments

Re:Until...

[Scrameustache]

nice tin foil hat.

Here's a real world example http://greentransportandenergy.blogspot.com/2009/03/great-importance-of-wheel-motors.html

They had a working prototype, they approached Detroit to get their making-cars expertise... and the project gets quickly scrapped for no apparent reason.

Re:Until...

[DJRumpy]

So what they need to do is reduce the weight of these independent motors, or find a way to place the suspension within the wheel assembly itself. Some kind of circular leaf spring assembly comes immediately to mind. Imagine a wheel axel, surrounded by springs rather than hard 'spokes' that connect it to the rubber.

Kind of a 2 state suspension system with a small leaf spring system between the actual rubber and the motor, and then a heavier duty suspension between the axels and the rest of the car.

An invention from University of Texas at Austin

[Taco Cowboy]

http://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/Energy%20Storage%20Composite%20Rotor.html

The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) has developed a 2 kW-hr flywheel battery for energy management on a hybrid electric urban bus. The battery will recover braking energy and store excess energy generated by the prime mover. The flywheel rotor, fabricated from high-strength composites, spins at 36,000 rpm at full charge (~825 m/s tip speed), and is housed in a vacuum enclosure to minimize windage drag. A cross-section of the flywheel system design is shown. Ensuring flywheel safety is a major issue that must be addressed in using flywheels for transportation applications. In support of this activity, the durability tests performed under Phase IV of the DARPA Flywheel Safety Program, focused on this flywheel design.