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A Hybrid Car With Detachable Engine Proposed
thecarchik writes "The SCI hyMod five-door minicar concept is the brainchild of a Romanian team made up of an engineer, a designer, and an automotive journalist. It uses what its designers call a 'dedicated logistics center' for the transformation from electric to gas-powered, in which the back end of the car containing a battery pack is removed, and replaced with one containing a gasoline engine module that drives the rear wheels. In normal urban use, the battery pack powers an electric motor that drives the front wheels. The hyMod combines elements of range-extended electric cars like the Fisker Karma and the Volt, plus a tiny, compact range extender, and perhaps even the Better Place automated battery-pack swap station."
I just want a vehicle that runs electric and if I'm running low on amps has a small generator to drive it and recharge the batteries.
Replacing the batteries is far simpler than removing an entire engine. Since A Better Place has gotten very little traction for their electric car with replaceable batteries concept, I don't see how this would go anywhere either.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Swapping would still be less convenient than carrying a generator, and without the generator range would be severely limited.
This is an overly complex solution to a simple problem. Until batteries improve, drive a PHEV.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I propose a hybrid car that fetches breakfast for me before I leave for work in the morning.
There. I've done the hard part. The rest is just engineering, right?
Hmmm... maybe it could fly, too? Let's see how many other asinine pie-in-the-sky iterations can we make on an already terrible idea....
That's too complex mechanically. And you have to decide, before you go out, how far you're going.
The Chevy Volt seems to be the right idea in hybrids. It's mostly electric, and solves the "range anxiety" problem. It just costs too much.
Still don't get why they can't figure out how to get a generator, or series of generators, to charge the batteries... or even run the car itself.
When you replace the main batter pack the motive power comes from the gasoline engine in stead of a "ange-extended electric car (like the Chevrolet Volt) that carries around the engine when it's not needed you get a gasoline powered car that carries around electric motors and batteries that it does not need (there is a 5kW battery that is not removed when the module is swapped).
There are a few other issues with the concept.
1. Who has the space for the device that swaps the big battery fro the gasoline motor?
2. What do you do if you suddenly need toto drive a longer distance than planned? You would need to go all the way home, swap modules and start out again. That is not very convenient.
3. Central swap stations will never be accepted. Who in their right mine would want to give away their engine or batter pack to receive a different one when you have no idea of the age or maintenance of that pack? Even assurances of proper maintenance would not be enough to make me bite. To even approach my level of comfort, ever engine and batter module would have to be inspected and repaired before I would ever accept it. This would cost a large amount of money and require many spares and some would be out of service waiting for or in the process of repair.
4. Even if the swap station always gave me back my module then point 2 become even broader; Every time I want to drive a longer distance or plans are changed I would need to drive somewhere to pick up my engine. That is not convenient at all. It would be simpler to belong to a car share program.
The beauty of the Volt is that the gasoline engine is always there. It could be change of plans, emergencies, forgetfulness, etc that runs the batter down but there is always a backup. With the module swapping the backup is somewhere else.
Which is really going to help you 20 miles out of town when you are nowhere neal a power outlet.
There are two things that could be done to make this simpler, I think.
A. Have the range extender engines be rentals (with deposit), and have them installed for a nominal fee at the rental place. If you don't take trips frequently, this could be a tenable model.
B. Have it be a small trailer, with a very simple hookup that doesn't require complex installation.
A F150 is better then no truck at all. I'd have to put a real front axle (and lockers) under it. Different compromises for different driving mixes.
I don't regret switching to my V8 roadster for daily driving. Opens the truck up, for off road use (still not a trailer queen). By deltas I'm greener then a hippy who switched from a GEO metro to a bicycle. (I'm down 1.4 liters in displacement.) I feel so green, I want to take a shower. Perhaps a lower final drive ratio will make me feel better. Certainly a cam will.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
During the cold war we were fed some bad information. In engineering you are very lucky to get a Romanian or Polish engineer. In engineering the education was first rate. Meanwhile most Americans seem to think that only the lowest of the low came out of the iron curtain nations. Subjects such as history got scrambled by the various dictators but engineering was highly valued. I suspect we are now seeing this from other nations most Americans think of as backwards. The abilities of engineers in South Korea, Taiwan and many other places is very advanced.
Just put a few of these change stations on the outskirts of the cities on the highway, so electric in town, drive a few hours to X, stop at a station on the way to get an engine and a full tank of gas, when you hit the other city swap the engine back for a battery. For people who drive a LOT in town they can keep the engine. Sounds very handy. Would need a ridiculous amount of infrastructure however.
454 c.i. V8 engine module available soon.
Have gnu, will travel.
You should see people trying to get gas at a 'blender' pump or remember back to trying to get T tops in and out. Anymore, if it don't happen with the push of a button...it ain't gonna happen.
I have written to Tesla and posted here about a similar idea.
Basically, most cars are driven local 95-99% of the time. But for the odd time that you are taking a vacation, you could either attach a trailer OR a pack on the back. The pack would simply plug into the frame and have a max weight of say 150 LB. From that point, the pack/trailer contains a motor/generator, a wave disc generator, a fuel cell, more batteries, or even ultra-capacitors. With this approach, it makes it possible to rent small trailer/packs for distance without having any special transmissions, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A few years ago, Aerovironment had a 2-seat kit car they'd built. With lithium batteries, it had excellent range, but they wanted to be able to drive it further. So, they made a small, two-wheel trailer for it which contained a small, gasoline motor, a small fuel tank and a generator. Drive it around town on batteries. Hook up the trailer when you want to do a road trip. Best of both worlds.
I'm surprised no one has come out with one of those for the Nissan Leaf, yet. Seems like the most logical way to proceed. Alternately, if you don't want to drag a trailer, come up with something which attaches to the rear end, like a trailer-hitch-mounted cargo rack. It would add a couple feet to your length, and you might want air shocks on the rear end for load leveling, but you could attach the engine when you need it and do without the extra weight when you don't need it.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
I'm not sure if this is what you're describing, but what would happen if you did such a thing to the Volt: put in a tiny little gas/diesel engine instead of its comparatively larger one... and make the battery pack bigger? Have the engine kick in when batteries hit 50%. I'm guessing that if you go too small with the gas engine, your driving would outpace the recoup from the gas engine. But... would that be a big deal? So what, you'd have gas left in your tank and you can't drive... ultimately you'd get less than 375 miles per single road trip... but you'd get a heck of a lot more distance than 35 miles, right? (Anyone good at math able to figure out a sweet spot?)
If there's one thing the past decades of consumer products has made clear, it's that modular design just don't sell. Consumers always prefer products that have the features (components) they want, and as many of them as possible, all the time. Nobody wants to swap things out, ever.
A non-modular design is always simpler and cheaper. And the killer is that eventually it will become cheap enough to have it all built-in, or one of the components will become obsolete.
There is a problem with the all electric car, but it isn't really a technical problem, it is a poorly artificial legal problem created by our governments for the benefit of the insurance companies. The problem is that eventually everyone sees the need for a car with more range than the all electric car. So even if you want to save the earth and have clean air to breath, you don't buy an all electric car unless you are part of a multi-car household. I personally would buy one if I could, but the rare extended range trip kills that option for me. I would even consider buying a new all electric car and keep my current gasoline car for the couple of trips a year that i would make in it, but there is one big problem with that: Insurance. Even though I'm the only driver in my household, and I could only be driving one car at a time, I'm required to have liability insurance on both cars if I own two licensed cars. And the cost of insuring two cars is simply prohibitive.
I'm talking about simple liability insurance here, not comprehensive insurance (insurance that protects the car itself). I can see some weak arguments why that might be more expensive if you own two cars, or more cars than drivers in the household. But for liability insurance it is really the driver that is being insured, not the car. You see that proven as soon as you add a teenage drive to a car's insurance policy. You see it proven if you get a ticket and get "points" added to your license. Yet our government actually discourages driving choices that would be good for the environment by allowing the insurance companies to double bill you for liability insurance if you own a second vehicle.
Even before the all-electrics came out, I would have bought a much smaller car than I currently have if I could have had a second vehicle for the few times that I wanted to take a passenger somewhere and/or carry around some cargo. The car would have been much more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly and decreased our imaginary demand on foreign oil. But I couldn't justify the double insurance hit, it just made more sense to buy a larger four seat hatchback.
So the government is continuing to mandate better mileage (not that I believe the coming mandates will ever really be imposed), and give out absurd amounts of tax dollars for absurd ethanol subsidies and electric car research, while they simply refuse to tell the insurance companies to stop scamming the consumer and double billing then if the consumer wants to own multiple vehicles. Until that happens the market for all-electric cars like the Volt is artificially restricted.
Yes, changing out the battery pack for a motor does seem to be an attempt to address this, but I'm not clear on why it should convert the car to a rear-wheel drive non-electric car. That just seems like a crappy solution that is going to introduce plenty more problems. It would seem better to just swap out the large battery pack with a smaller battery and engine and fuel tank and retain the basic electric car. But it is really an artificial problem that is being created by letting the insurance industry bill you for both the number of cars you have as well as the number of drivers and the experience and driving record of those drivers, and if that problem were not there a free market could resolve the problem with current options.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It would be a whole lot easier to just buy two cars, an electric and a petrol model. That way, you need not mess around with swapping schtuff, just take the other key.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Use economies of scale, use a well engineered 1L diesel with a 10 gallon tank to get most people 300miles. Keep it under 300lb dry and make it aerodynamic. When you need to drive your electric long distance, rent the trailer.
Yea, two cars would be a good solution for anyone wanting an all-electric vehicle, if only they were not forced to pay twice for liability insurance. They could be the only person driving either car, and can't drive both at once, yet the states allow the insurance companies to charge the driver for liability insurance on each car. At current insurance rates that is a very significant amount of money, and makes owning a second car for that rare extended trip an out of the question option for someone wanting to buy an all-electric vehicle. Add another driver to one car's insurance and the rates go up. Get a ticket and "points" and the rates go up. So clearly it is the driver who is being insured. But if you want to do what you suggest, even a single driver household will see a big and unjustified insurance hit. Mandated by the same states that claim that they want to clean up the air and reduce our use of foreign oil.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Better Place certainly hasn't "deployed dozens of switch stations" in Israel.
They built one battery switch station in Israel in 2011, there is zero evidence they've spent the millions to build any more. They've proudly videotaped installation of a few electrical outlets on posts as "charge spots". Those posts point out one of the problems with the BP model: since they own the pack and sell you electric miles, you are *required* to recharge with them, at much greater expense than plugging into an outlet yourself.
BP likes to confuse cheap charge spots with expensive swap stations. It's just more flimflammery from them. They already turned a Chinese utility's plans for 2300 "charging poles" into swap stations (and that utility's research director complained each swap station would cost $3 - 4.5M). They turned a single Chery electric car concept that theoretically could use their Quickdrop standardized battery into a joint venture. Etc.
BP could make sense. For less upfront cost but far greater cost per mile, someone else owns your battery and can quickly swap it for you, *IF* they actually build swap stations where you need to go in a small country like Denmark or Israel. But they have a long difficult road ahead, one that they continually try to obscure with PR puffery and shills.
=S
A 12V battery weight about 40 pounds. The Chevy Volt battery pack weighs 10x that, and holds 16 kWh to go roughly 30 miles all-electric. So your beefy swappable second battery will only send the car 4 miles down the road! So you need to put a bunch in to get reasonable distance. In fact the battery packs in EVs are built out of such sheets or slices wired together. But now you're talking a lot of unused space for the additional batteries, and space is already at a premium in an EV with a big battery pack. And the economics of the extender battery are hard. Recharging a battery with 5 kWh only costs 75 cents or so at home, so the convenience factor has to be far more than the value of the energy.
You also underestimate the safety issues of having a heavy, hot, high-voltage electrical battery somewhere in the car. The built-in battery packs of EVs are part of a complicated system that monitors and manages thermal and electrical issues. It would be great an add-on to this could be made safe and convenient and standardized. Go join a backyard EV group and make it happen.
=S
Everyone blathering about generators, go Google some. The backyard generators inflating Bouncy Castles at kids' parties that you're probably thinking of put out 3.5 kW or so. A 20 kW generator is a huge beast.
And 20 kW is only 26 horsepower! Sure, a car on flat ground doesn't require a lot of power, but a fully-laden car going up a mountain pass (and now towing/carrying a generator!) requires a lot more than that. Car companies are justifiably afraid of the negative publicity from some car reviewer taking their car into the mountains and slowing to a crawl.
So you need a small powerful light generator that can crank out 45 kW. And to avoid looking terrible in comparison with a Volt or the upcoming plug-in Prius, it has to have decent fuel efficiency. Damn those stupid generator engineers for not giving me a pony!
Many companies are trying to figure this out, with Audi's Wankel, Lotus' 3-cylinder extender, etc. http://www.atcentre.nl/images/stories/publications/public/atc%20trend%20analysis%20-%20range%20extender%20technology.pdf is a nice summary of about 16 different possibilities. Meanwhile in the real world Toyota's already there with the Prius' 1.8l Atkinson-cycle engine droning away.
=S
A simple hookup for 40 amps at 500V. Good luck with the safety regulations. And convincing electric cars to add the port for this, and to reprogram their cars to support charging while under motion.
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genset_trailer has been talked about for decades, but I just don't see it happening except amongst hobbyists. Even if they were available, most people will just rent a car/pick-up/minivan when their small EV doesn't meet a trip's requirements.
=S
Another idea for log distance tollway driving is to make a standard trolley system dedicated to trolleycars on tollways and motorways. Then build trolleycars with a trolley with a tamper proof meter, when entering the toll road the meter starts to read the power used via the trolley and the electricity cost is added to the standard toll price. Of curse trying to use bus wires on trolleycars should cause a failure in the system (550 V vs 400 V should suffice)
Actually a lot of the functionality of Renault cars has been designed and built by Romanian engineers for quite some time now. I'm not saying that's necessarily state of the art, but it surely invalidates your statement.
Not a bad attempt, but I think what I'd really like to see is this sort of concept implemented to its full, logical extent, so you could start out by buying a small, low powered car, then change it bit by bit and end up with something with a big engine etc.
IOW, something where every part fits on a set of standard frames, so you could change your car according to your needs and your wallet, and could combine any parts of any make. That's what I want :-)
Kinda reminds me of that song by King Missile.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I can attest that all engines since the model T are in fact, already, detachable.
The SCI hyMod five-door minicar concept is the brainchild of a Romanian
NEXT!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Welcome to 1997 and the AC Propulsion T-Zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero
They even created an algorithm for the trailer steering so the yolk could be very short but yet stay stable on the highway, and it would stay directly behind the car when reversing which make parking a breeze. (AC Propulsion does the tech for the Tesla products, and other hybrid or full electrics we all know.)
I think the efficiency of the"modern" combustion engine only delivers 10% of the total power available from gas to moving the car forward. That means 90% of the energy available in gasoline is lost through heat, vibration, noise, and inefficiency in the drive train mechanics.
Why not just design a better engine and car?
Hybrids are a a stupid mediocre attempt at trying to grab a few more % in efficiency of an otherwise broken technology.
When you realize that we have used up all readily accessible reserves of fossil fuels on the planet in just over 100 years, it is ridiculous that car companies are allowed to continue to put out a flawed product. 100 years from now, the "modern" combustion engine will be regarded as one of the biggest technological follies in the history of mankind, on par with other stupid human tricks like hunting a species to extinction, clear cutting entire forests for a cow pasture, and destroying the environment. Electric cars just use fossil fuels from a different source, with few communities drawing energy from renewable sources of power.
If cars followed the same innovation trend of other technologies, we should be measuring mileage in triple figures. The idea of a car company selling 30 or even 50 mpg car would be laughed out of existence.
We are seeing some attempt at car companies to build a better engine in order to achieve better mileage, WITHOUT using hybrid technology, but when you are only using 10% of total efficiency, there is a significant room for improvement. The problems is that in 100 years of car "evolution", nobody has any better idea on a finding a more efficient way of propelling a 4 wheel wagon, care companies are just jumping on the hybrid bandwagon because its the "cool green" technology at the moment.
Carbon dioxide is not the enemy, the Green movement is a recipe for disaster. A bunch of like minded idiots buying into the concept that carbon offset taxes and hybrids is the way we are going to save the planet. But all the green tree hugging granlola crunchers do is suppress real innovations that WILL save the planet in favour of cheap tricks and fads. Instead of inventing a better engines and extracting better efficiency out of fuel (whether its fossil or renewable), instead car companies are bending over backwards catering to smug assholes trying to build the next cool green thing all to save a little carbon dioxide while still gobbling up our fuel reserves.
The "threat" of global warming will pail in comparison to the economic and social disaster that is looming when the fuel pumps run dry and 100 years of continued abuse of this valuable resource is being suppressed by pure marketing and green hype.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I saw my engine laying on a blanket, next to a broken toaster oven.
*points* ah ha! fag!
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Regenerative breaking already charges in motion. Small welding generators on trailers exist just fine. Per Disney's Cars movie, a Tesla Roadster can pull the trailer just fine.
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I saw a similar suggestion literally decades ago. It's called a "trailer". Trayyyyyy-lerrrrrrrr. You put a diesel generator on one of your human 'trai-lurrs', and hook it up for long distance trips. For short trips, you leave it in the garage.