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Omega · **LoP Guest** lop guest User ID: 90665 04-30-2012 09:31 PM

It is all about 1 thing and 1 thing only,$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

**mstra** lop guest User ID: 93712 05-01-2012 02:55 AM

Cascinova Wrote:

I remember reading this story about a flywheel car.

A flywheel-powered car is, in fact, an electric car. It would work in virtually the same manner as the battery-powered electrics now entering mass production. The main difference would be the energy source-- flywheels instead of chemical batteries--and vastly improved performance. The General Motors ev1, for example, a peppy two-seater scheduled to make its debut in California and Arizona this fall, carries 26 conventional automotive lead-acid batteries. It’s the finest electric car in the world, says Bitterly, with a terrible energy-storage system. The ev1’s 1,100 pounds of batteries give it a practical range of just 70 to 90 miles, and those batteries will die within 100 to 200 rechargings--one or two years of typical commuting. You can replace them for about $1,800. Bitterly’s flywheel system, by contrast, stores four times more energy per pound than lead-acid batteries; a simple same-weight conversion to 12 flywheels would boost the ev1’s range beyond 200 miles. Those flywheels would spin up more quickly than the batteries recharge. Also, they contain no toxic materials like lead, and they run just as well when it’s hot or cold. And you would never need to replace them.

http://discovermagazine.com/1996/aug/rei...ngthewh842

That was in 1996, but I assume they got shut down, or put out of business one way or the other.

I remember the flywheel idea too. Storing kinetic energy. For sure less toxic than chemical batteries.

There have been many, many excellent inventions and improvements in energy sources and ways to use it, all of which have been buried while we are stuck with chemical batteries and reciprocating engines from the 1700s.

What pisses me off about this thread is the incredible ignorance displayed by so many posters who have never bothered to learn the first thing about basic science, and so believe anything and everything without the slightest bit of knowledge to evaluate it. Truly, the dumbing down has been a success.

**Luvapottamus**

mstra Wrote:

Luvapottamus Wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4tMIvou-...re=related

Interesting, thanks.

VW XL1: Driving distance on battery power alone: 22 miles. Battery capacity 5000 watt hours. Lithium ion battery weight 132 lbs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-...eview.html

Even with a carbon fiber (read plastic) body, the vehicle weighs 1752 lbs. The carbon fiber body is of course a non-starter on the face of it because it costs 20 times more to make than a steel body. What they are doing is cutting weight any way they can in order to maximize the mpg from the diesel engine.

Yeah, the carbon fiber is a hurdle. I'd like to see the hybrid setup as well. Personally I tend to not like them, having seen the prius and that is was just basically a geo prism(corolla) engine (Might have been a different engine number but nothing special)

coupled to an extremely overcomplicated looking generator. Then the fly by wire conteols were a put-off, just didn't like it. My 78 VW dasher wagon got better mileage.

VW may have done something more elegant, I haven't looked under the hood.

But the car weighing so much, probably largely a result of crash standards. It'd be nice to have something for commuting short distances that didn't have to comply.

In Oklahoma we do have an "experimental" tag available so nothing stops you from tinkering and driving what you come up with.

I started on an electric trike, but ended up moving before I could finish it. Kind of like "the green machine" bigwheel toy I had as a kid.

chuckle

I think the font suspension is in the shed somewhere. I'll get back to that some day. Bought a bunch of bicycles at thrift stores and hacked and spliced those frame tubes to make what I wanted. Could be done better , but it was an easy way to play.

It was more or less working as a bike when I took it apart.

chuckle