Can you help me with my eco-friendly automotive theory?
Please humor my idea for a moment. I had this idea for an eco-friendly car. Its basically the Ford Fusion only with solar panels covering the car with the fusion generator that is already currently built into it (instead of using gas as a kickstart). The vehicle would gain solar power while the vehicle is parked which juices the battery. As you drive down the road, both axles turn, the gears turn for the generator (fusion) storing energy so the car maintains a solid energy source that can be manually toggled between solar and fusion power usage. I’m not an engineer, but I think at least some part of my idea could be used in creating an eco-friendly, sleek and very cool looking car (5 speed manual, 2 door, seats 4 adults, reflective silver or scratch resistant mirror-like material with black racing strips, the solar panels are built into the racing strips so that it blends into the design, limited power/automatic features so that the battery is not drained too much, vehicle uses 6 car batteries and 2 generators ). A second option is that we could simply buy the same alternative energy hybrid or fuel cell
vehicles that are used currently in the UK.
Something to think about:
"The atomic automobile"
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=656
"Vegetable oil car"
http://video.about.com/alternativefuels/Car-Runs-on-Vegetable-Oil.htm
"2010 Toyota Prius Hybrid"
http://alternativefuels.about.com/od/2010hybridreviews/gr/2010ToyotaPrius.htm
"The Hybrid Experience"
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/webridestv/5539-the-hybrid-experience-video.htm
"Invention Nation: Super Hybrid" (motorcycle style car? 100 mpg)
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/science-channel/5067-invention-nation-super-hybrid-video.htm
"Fuel Celled Vehicles"
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fuelcell.shtml
Wow, 3 days and no answer. I guess no one reads this section and no one cares about using alternative energy for their vehicles. God help us all when we run out of oil. I guess we will just kill each other while fighting over gas and charge 0 per gallon of gas 20 years from now, so be it.
One Response
c2builder
13 Feb 2010
Solar panels make energy so slowly that your idea won’t work well. I believe you need to get into "the numbers" yourself. You don’t need to be a licensed engineer. "Build your own Electric Vehicle", a book by Seth Leitman and Bob Brant, 2009, is very readable even as it goes through many of the numbers you need. It doesn’t cover solar well so you’ll have to find a simple source describing how much power you’re really going to get.
What I found, when I looked at the idea of solar cars, was that a normal weight/size car was going to require 10,000 watts at normal speeds. Drive it for an hour and that 10,000 "watt-hours" or "10 kilowatt hours". Cars aren’t very big and the solar panels of that size will take a few days to replenish what you just expended. I discussed my disappointment on this with my cousin who’s been involved with the MIT solar car; he said "put the panels on your house"!
BTW, the MIT solar car is far from normal in many respects. The typical american driver wouldn’t even consider it a car. The MIT students are given cutting edge components by companies which want to help MIT. There’s no drive to make something remotely cost effective.
You’re not alone in your desires to find alternatives to gas-powered cars. Check out the EAA (www.eeaev.org), a group of people who convert ‘normal’ cars to electric; they certainly ‘know the numbers’.
Your idea of having 2 motors has been proposed by some. And the new EVs (Electric Vehicles) are designed with "direct drive" where a lot of the traditional gear train is omitted.
As for the few answers, realize that your question carried a lot of reading requests; many people probably didn’t want to spend the time to look at it all.