merlot-fro

check out this retro-fittable hybrid electric system! I'm not sure if it would work on our cars or not, but imagine the possibilities! (and the possible mpg and torque figures)

http://www.sigmaautomotive.com/elect...trocharger.php



what do you guys think?

BMmonteSS

Seems very hooky to me, I've never seen an electric motor of that size put out more than 1-3 HP. Super capacitors have come a long way in the last few years, but your still going to need a pretty big electric motor to make any kind of usefull HP.

There is no way your going to get the "3 second" performance increase unless they put this on a severly overgeared 4 cly that ran mid 30 second quarters. Only then would 1-2 HP be usefull.

merlot-fro

what about torque and gas savings? wouldn't this engine generate alot more torque?

I'm waiting for when they compare 1/4 mile times... that will be interesting

there's a bunch of equations on the third page

79vette

They say it will atleast shed 3 seconds off my quarter mile time! wow.... that will put me into the low 10's high 9's........

I like how they throw in that this was developed in conjunction with Texas A&M... I am currently an Marine/Mechanical Engineering student at A&M and I have never heard of such a thing in development. Currenly we are playing around with hydrogen fuel cells in our research departments.

BMmonteSS

Those are very broad equations and evaluations of "what if" your milage is increased by x%. They don't have any testing done, heck I doubt they even have a running vehicle. I read back over that page and I can't find one single number that refers to the acutall output of the product. If these guys were for real they would at least have how much power the electric motor makes in watts.

Go to their main page and see what other "snake oil" they sell. I see super duper ground wires and magnetic fuel straiteners. These guys are automotive dolts!

79vette

Those math equations are pointless in reference to the supposed product. All that is, is how to calculate any vehicals theoretical MPG which is given to you by the car makers anyways. Its just smoke and mirrors to make you think they are legitamate. It reminds me of the "Time machine" in Napoleon Dynamite.

90firebird

all I could imagine that thing doing is eliminating some or possibly all the parasitic loss on the engine caused by the accessories, which may be good for a few horses, but probably not worth replacing your alternator, adding the battery in the trunk, and the likely extravagant price they want for it...

BMmonteSS

All the power that goes into the "battery" or super capacitor comes from the engine, so your not eleminating any parasitic losses at all. Actually your increasing them by converting rotary force into electricity and turning that back into rotary force. You always lose energy any time you convert it, other wise electrical parts wouldn't get hot.

If this system worked it would improve fuel efficiency and power, by storing up "energy" while the car would be otherwise wasting it cruising down the road and then releasing it when needed during acceleration. Electric motors produce their maximum torque at 0 rpm, which is great for getting a big heavy car moving. This is why hybrids get great city milage. The problem with their design is that the electric motor they are wanting to use is way undersized and underpowered. Unless these guys found a way to stuff 10 lb. of "energy" in a 5 lb. bag there is just no way it will work.

mattjw

I agree.. True hybrid cars also use electronic tranmissions in conjunction with an alternator/motor to charge the batteries during braking. Without an electronic tranny and without integrating with the ECM that controls it this system would not provide that feature..

-Matt

rx7speed

wow some things I found on that site made me wonder.

like the hot wires it says on a normal car current flows from the positive side to the negative side. that is wrong. current flow is from negative to positive

or the neo magnets creating a specific resonant frequency. honestly I might be wrong but I didn't know magnets would resonate on their own.

the whole electracharger thing seems like a joke.


now true these guys might not know anything about cars but then again they might know a little and know this stuff is scams they just want to make the money.


I hate people like that

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

OK, before this goes any further, all that thing appears to be is a motor/generator (something wound so it can be used as both). It replaces the alternator and as a generator charges the battery, takes care of the electrical system’s needs… then when needed under load it is used as a motor. Now that being said, I’d be willing to bet the power output is about 3-5hp (most belt systems use for alternators will not tolerate much more then that), which is hardly enough to make an appreciable difference in acceleration, mileage… For that matter, you have to go through the mechanical to electric conversion and/or back again 2x there, giving 2 opportunities to loose energy due to efficiency losses + the extra weight of the components added to do this.

There is probably a marginal gain in if the control circuit is pretty smart in when it applies power to the thing and if it limits the charge of the capacitors and battery so that the engine doesn’t see the full load at once (just kinda sneak it in while other stuff is going on), but otherwise, this thing is a big waste of time and money. (and I would argue most true hybrids are also, but for different reasons)

BMmonteSS

I'd have to agree with your "hybrid theory". I think automakers are going the wrong way with hybrids. I think it would be much more efficient to have an electric motor that is capable of propelling the car on its own without having to cut over to an IC (internal combustion) motor. Say you have a 100 hp electric motor, then have a very small diesel generator that is tuned to run at only one specific rpm for making power. It's surprising what you can do to increase power and efficiency if you don't have to run something over a wide rpm band. You could probably get away with a little 1L turbo diesel and get your thermal efficency numbers in the 50% range compared to 30% for most gas IC engines. You could be looking at a true 75-100 mpg vehicle at a marginal increase in cost over existing hybrids.

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

WELL... (can of worms + can opener)

Not a bad approach, basically you’re building a diesel locomotive with a steering wheel… issues, people aren’t going to be happy with a car that has an engine that runs at WOT all the time, at least I would be surprised if you could sell them on something that’s buzzy and annoying even when you’re sitting still and not actually using any power. Second, it’s hard to increase the efficiency of something by adding inefficiencies (mechanical energy-> electric -> mechanical) and weight (now you need the weight of fuel + the weight of batteries + weight of motor(s) + weight of wiring…), and third, all the additional parts come with packaging issues.

This all works fine on a locomotive because you’ve got a separate vehicle who’s only job is to package this stuff and weight actually helps to some extent (when dealing with pulling a heavy load). Also, the inefficiencies really do their biggest number when you change speed, and a train isn’t as likely to do that as a car in traffic.

That being said, I’ve got a much bigger issue with the hybrid and even more so the zero emissions vehicle thing. That being that it’s more of a political move and those with money/power sticking those that don’t.

In both cases they are sold as more efficient, cleaner alternatives, but in real life, most hybrids get only marginally better mileage if at all and would take longer then the life of both the battery packs (would you like to guess what it will cost to replace the batteries in these things) and the life of car to get your return on the investment, if at all. Worse yet, on the emissions/pollution front, you’re not lowering them you’re just sending them off someplace else for someone else to deal with them. With hybrids you’re adding acids, lead, heavy metals… to the mixture of stuff that is ultimately going to get out to the environment (and guess what happens in an accident), and in the case of zero emissions vehicles, on top of those “costs” you’re directly moving the pollution produced from wherever you’re using your vehicle to wherever the power plant is. Yes, LA is cleaner, but what about the guy that lives next to the power plant that made the electricity? Now what most people don’t realize is that power plants are generally not held to as high a standard as your car is WRT to emissions, and even more so, utilities have totally avoided building/upgrading infrastructure since the standards that they do have to follow came into effect (their argument is that it’s WAY too expensive to build stuff that meets the new standards so they’d rather limp along with 30y/o infrastructure), so much of the power that we use is more environmentally costly and TO SOMEONE ELSE then if we just drove a well tuned, normal car.

BMmonteSS

Very good points, I never said anything about people actually wanting to buy a hybrid It took 3$ a gallon gas to make me buy a subaru that gets high 20's on the highway. I'm already thinking of ways to make it faster, and I just got it Saterday.

There are three big problems with hybrids.
1) Electric motor technology isn't compact enough
2) Electrical storage is heavy, and inefficient, I think we're going to see some neat things in the next few years with super-capacitors. I have a friend who played around with them on a future truck team.
3) We HAVE to work with our current fuel infrastructure....which is gasoline and diesel. This hydrogen economy bull pucky is never going to work.

I couldn't agree more with your views on passing pollution off to some one else to deal with. You have this problem with electricity and you have this problem with hydrogen. People would like to think that hydrogen is the awnser because its only by product is water. People don't understand that it takes energy or natural gas to make hydrogen. This is why we need to concentrate on useing the fossile fuel that we do have more efficiently.

You would think by my post I'm some kind of tree hugging hippy. I actually work for a natural gas company and I'm responsible for keeping compressors running that pump BILLIONS of cubic feet of natural gas eash year to consumers.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

3) We HAVE to work with our current fuel infrastructure....which is gasoline and diesel. This hydrogen economy bull pucky is never going to work.

how can you say it wont ever work? and hydrogen can be made from solar, wind, nuclear and a couple other alternative sources. you act like all we ever had was gas and diesel. not sure if you can remember this or not but at one point in time there wasnt the grand infrastructure we have for gas. it started small and became bigger untill you cant go 10 miles without seeing a gas station. hydrogen is easily the best option we have and in 10-15 years I bet you will be able to find a hydrogen fueling facility in your town! itll go even faster if the goverment really starts pushing! and GM has already jumped on the band wagon so im set!!

BMmonteSS

Electricity is made in all those ways too, but can you guess what engergy source we use the most of to make electricity?......It's coal. The dirtiest and cheapest fossil fuel.

Well I should have said we won't see hydrogen in the next 20-50 years. Sure things could happen sooner depending on politics. The big turnoff I see is that your dealing with a high pressure gas. Super dangerous and expensive to fill. Their working on some kind of "nickel metal sponge" that will hold the gas at a lower pressure. I'd have to dig up the SAE artical on it.

With the abundance of natural gas companies in the appalachians there was a big push for NG power vehicles here about 5-10 years ago. Even though there was a filling station in almost every major city in WV people weren't interested even though NG was HALF the cost of gasoline. People really like the convienence of pulling into any station and filling up. It's going to take a huge change in mind set from the general consumer to even make hybrids a viable option.

Poeple talk with their pocket book.....if gas prices keep doing what they are now, we may very well see some crazy stuff in the very near future. My real point is that I think automakers and deffinately law makers are passing up very real gains in efficency and pollution control and aiming way too high to quick. You have to let technology take it's course, and that course takes money. So the best way to do it is to make the consumer pay for it. I hate to even suggest it, but 4$ gas would have some very low MPG vehicles on the market pretty quick.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

hopefully sooner than later!!

Tex WS6

An electric power steering rack offers advantages. NS

DIGGLER

iTrader: (1)

Lmao. Back from the dead.
My wifes civic hybrid has knocked down 56mpg with 4 people and their luggage. Battery lasted 8 years before I replaced it. It is made of d sized cells in series and weighs something like 75lbs. Electric forklifts use a battery that weighs 2000+ lbs and they last 6-7 years if maintained very well.

Stauf

iTrader: (2)

9+ year old thread.

Base91

iTrader: (1)

Anyone have a link to the additive that turns water into gas?