Alright, I didn't want to hijack the mileage thread, but it's kind of related.
Some hybrids have a seperate drive system on one axle that's electric. Siemens and others make electric motors up to more than 200Hp.
What I've been wondering:
If you've got a front-wheel drive car, could you take a rear axle, differential, etc off of an awd junk-yard car, shorten it of course, and put a seperate electrical drive system on it? I've emailed some guy at Berkley who has been making his own hybrids since the 70's , but haven't heard a thing.
How possible do you think it would be?
Is there a Monster Geek Garage program?
-Tom
Other thing you need to consider is batteries. You need a place to store the power to drive the electric motor. That adds a considerable amount of weight to a somewhat heavy car.
Also in order for the hybrid to really be worth something, you need to decrease the power on the gasoline engine in the system to help reduce fuel consumption.
Anything's doable, but without doing something with the gas engine portion, I don't think it'd be too worth it......
true. I have a wagon, so I didn't think a place for the batteries would be so inhibitive as the cost.
A less powerful engine would be the tough part. I didn't think there was much to do to increase or decrease (intentionally) the power with an NA engine.
Another thing that gets me is that it's better suited to urban driving with stop and go traffic. It's the sitting idle with a gas engine running and taking off that consumes so much, and hybrids just aren't great for trips over 80 miles. I seldom, very seldom drive around my town, so I wouldn't get much benefit of any kind of hybrid. But it's still fun to think about.
You'd need a fairly complicated system to control power to the motors and regenerative braking (not necessary, but damn cool), you wouldn't have the traffic shut-down feature most hybrids have, and good batteries (lithium ion IMHO or don't bother) are $$. However, it would be an interesting exercise to try it - ghetto hybrid! You'd probably see more benefit from temporary acceleration boost than mileage increase (probably worse, in fact) as you wouldn't be able to ghetto the nicer hybrid features, but would be adding weight. You may be able to rig some manual deal to do electric traffic creep and just put the clutch in on the motor so it doesn't start up, though I guess releasing the clutch while in motion would kick start it again like a hybrid does automatically. You'd need a BIG alternator to charge the batteries, also, and remember, the higher the voltage with an electric, the better.
What about big caps to store energy temporarily for quick bursts of power?
Steve
Midnight in a Perfect World on Amazon or order anywhere. The first book in a quartet chronicling the rise of a man from angry criminal to philanthropist. Midnight... is a distopic noirish novel featuring 'Duchess', a modified 1990 Subaru Legacy wagon.
