Electric/Wind Hybrid - Is it Feasible?
Created August 31, 2006, at 9:38 am by Anonymous
Is it feasible to create a car which runs on battery/electric motor which is constantly re-charged by turbines harnessing the wind force from the forward motion? I'm not an engineer but it seems to me that it could be a possible method of efficient travel. Have any companies/organisations considered this before?
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Let's get this straight: You want to use the car's movement through the air to power a windmill to run a generator to re-charge the battery that's powering the electric motor that's moving the car through the air? If it worked, it would be called perpetual motion. Unfortunately, you can't get something for nothing.
Something similar to this (complete with pictures) was run here previously - see http://www.hybridcars.com/discussion/discussthread.php?thread_id=723&replies=5.
No.
The only possible benefit would be to use the wind to help slow the vehicle down to stop it. And that isn't very feasible.
The best way to use wind energy and solar energy for transportation is to feed the wind and solar energy into the electric distribution grid.
Then use electricity for a PHEV. It is even possible to use the batteries in a PHEV to assist the grid in overcoming transient peak loads.
I think you can see a paper about this at the ac propulsion web site.
Here is an idea - embed solar panels into the body of the car and have it recharge its batteries while it is sitting in the parking lot. That is anywhere from 6-8 hours of recharging.
Please do the math first. The amount of power generated by a solar panel the size of a car roof is about 1/25 of a horsepower. If you charge your battery all day, how many seconds of driving will you get? Answer: Not very many.
This has been discussed several times here.
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