How Chrysler's Battery-Less Hybrid Minivan Works

thecarchik writes "Chrysler announced Wednesday that it would partner with the US Environmental Protection Agency to build and test prototypes of a different kind of hybrid vehicle, one that accumulates energy not in a battery pack but by compressing a gas hydraulically. The system in question, originally developed at the EPA labs, uses engine overrun torque to capture otherwise wasted energy, as do conventional hybrid-electric vehicles. The engine is Chrysler's standard 2.4-liter four-cylinder, the base engine in its minivan line. But rather than turning a generator, that torque powers a pump that uses hydraulic fluid to increase the pressure inside a 14.4-gallon tank of nitrogen gas, known as a high-pressure accumulator."

Comments

Compressed gases aren't *too* bad

[slimjim8094]

I routinely work with compressed gases (~2500psi, medical oxygen on an ambulance). The tanks are tremendously well-built, and if you drop one you're worried about the valve because it protrudes - not the tank itself. And by my envelope calculations, there's something like 603k pounds trying to turn my tanks inside out.

Yes, I'd want to be damn sure I knew what that tank was doing, and how well it was built - but we're pretty good at making pressure vessels that won't rupture on their own, and equally good at making ones that are solid enough to withstand impacts.

Frankly, 15 gallons of gasoline worries me more. The kind of impact that would rupture a tank would aerosolize the gas, and I'd rather be in an explosion than an explosion with fire.