HSD competition around the corner?

[ukrkoz]

twice as efficient for quarter of HSD complexity flywheel hybrid:

You Tube

You Tube

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars...ybrid-flywheel

[Frodo65]

One item the flywheel storage folks don't mention is the gyroscope effect - high-energy-capacity flywheel storage units have considerable amounts of angular momentum. That momentum makes motion in the plane of rotation more difficult, and creates issues with bearing durability/friction. Same issues come into play in collisions - having a flywheel storage device fail when it's 'full' could be quite catastrophic - that failure can give a whole different meaning to the phrase "that car's DA BOMB".

Not that flywheel storage could not be used for certain applications, much like hydraulic-pressure units. Chemical battery tech currently available isn't suited for rapid bursts of energy - but other units like hydraulic and flywheel are more effective in those applications.

There was a PM article a while back on hydraulic storage unit applied to garbage trucks (and other HD delivery vehicles. It improved typical-stop-start-stop cycle FE by something like 80%, and vastly reduced wear of components like brakes and transmissions. With fuel at high prices, those types of systems easily become cost-effective.

Here's a write-up for one of those systems.

[ukrkoz]

what is interesting to me, back in 'ol country, somewhere in early 70-s I believe, we had a show on TV, very cool one, about home made designers, inventors, and all kinds of odd ideas. there was a fella on it once, PHD, that had this idea proposed - flywheel energy storage. 40 or so years ago. guess, it finally started making its ways into production.
as of "it's da bomb" i seriously doubt. Porsche ain't an idiot. flywheel itself is most likely horizontal, there will be no vectoral steering forces resulting. gyroscopes - read flywheels - of all sizes been used as stabilizers of various kinds for years, from marine to space applications.
all i know is until they still making profit off their current production capacities and designs, no changes will be made. typical example is spark plug. it is not redesigned simply because it costs $$ to change production facilities, and those been running ever since early 1900s. it does not matter what one invents. it matters how cost efficient it is for those who run the show.

[Frodo65]

Originally Posted by ukrkoz

what is interesting to me, back in 'ol country, somewhere in early 70-s I believe, we had a show on TV, very cool one, about home made designers, inventors, and all kinds of odd ideas. there was a fella on it once, PHD, that had this idea proposed - flywheel energy storage. 40 or so years ago. guess, it finally started making its ways into production.
as of "it's da bomb" i seriously doubt. Porsche ain't an idiot. flywheel itself is most likely horizontal, there will be no vectoral steering forces resulting. gyroscopes - read flywheels - of all sizes been used as stabilizers of various kinds for years, from marine to space applications.
all i know is until they still making profit off their current production capacities and designs, no changes will be made. typical example is spark plug. it is not redesigned simply because it costs $$ to change production facilities, and those been running ever since early 1900s. it does not matter what one invents. it matters how cost efficient it is for those who run the show.

Here in the US, a magazine called 'Popular Science' has done the same sort of thing over the years - as have a number of other mags targeted to the same demographic. PS has gone into some 'strange places', with more political advocacy than actual science and engineering articles. The various mags have also done TV productions - some of which are available on the various 'video sites'.

A horizontal flywheel will have a vertical momentum issue - a problem for going over bumps or rises/falls of the road. It will also have a 'party primary voter' issue - a tendency to turn left or right, depending on the direction of rotation. Gyro stabilization isn't a good thing when you depend on tire friction to change direction - the car will have a larger tendency to 'catch air'. Ultimately, it's an engineering and a physics problem to be solved - and the solution will be a challenge. The engineering problem is around bearings for the flywheel, managing momentum in a race car, and keeping the car's 'feel' consistent for the driver. Nothing slows down a car faster than 'dicey' feel - it doesn't even have to have REAL handling issues, but if the driver isn't confident in finding the 'edge', the car will lose the race.

The problem of containing the energy during a crash is also a very real engineering challenge - killing your drivers in a crash is generally considered bad form. The materials needed to contain the energy in catastrophic failure may well take the weight of the unit out of the 'worth it' category.

Personally, I'd like to see a cost-effective thermoelectric energy recovery unit come to market to recover the energy going out the exhaust or radiator and render it usable. This would improve the total conversion efficiency of the system, and make a 80+ MPG sedan more than a pipedream.