Quote:
|
Originally Posted by KenWittlief
I think there are two viable options to improve transportation:
1. Hybrid-electric cars with the ratio turned around. Presently we are seeing cars with 60HP gas engines and 10-20 HP electric motors, with small batteries. The gas engine produces most of the drive energy, and the electric motor produces a boost to make the car feel more sporty. You could easily eliminate the electric motors in these cars, and they would drive like the original VW rabbits (70HP) or VW beetles (55HP).
You only need about 5HP to hold an aerodynamic car at 65 mph on a level road - so they need to turn the ratios around: build a car with a 7 or 10HP gas engine that drives a generator, and have a 70 or 80HP electric motor for the drive train.
The neat part about this is you could design the electric motors right into the wheels - make each wheel a separate electric motor - No transmission, no drive shafts, no universal or CV joints, no differential... and you have full time 4 wheel drive, and quad redundancy on your drivetrain (if one motor fails its no big deal). Using the motors to brake the car you also eliminate the need for the entire brake system! The drive train would normally be taking slightly less power than the gas motor/generator produces, the extra charges the battery bank. When you need to climb a hill, or pull out into traffic you take some energy from the batteries.
2. Put a wire over the road - again, you only need an average 5HP per car at highway speeds. With a wire available you would never need to fire up the gas engine in a hybrid car. You would only need wires over the main roads and highways, the battery in the car would get you down the side streets.
There you go! Two solutions: A true hybrid electric/gas car that could get 90 -120 mpg, or a fully electric car with power distribution through wires over the main roads.
We dont need no stinking fuel! We could build either of these systems today.
|
Those are both really good ideas. But as for the second idea, why not just build more "green" transportation solutions? Our nation has thousands of miles of abandoned rail lines near and within our cities. We could easily pave them into recreation / commuter bike trails, or even rebuild the rail lines and have light rail or subway lines again. Cars are just a nightmare to urban planners, especially since up to 40% of downtown areas in major cities are now devoted to cars and the infastructure needed to support them.
Many of our nations highways are already past the designed capacity, and widening (or building new) highways in many urban areas is no longer an option because land acquisition would be too costly for the perceived benefits. This is where building light rail, subway, or even monorail transit lines can help us. (A lot of people may laugh at the monorail idea, but Japan has been using
transit monorails for years.) Plus, by having more fixed guideway transit, we could plan our our cities a lot better, instead of the sporadic (and often wasteful) growth that rises from an automobile-based society.
I think cities in the future would look a lot better with light rail and monorails than they would if they continued building highways. Here are two existing cities (Kuala Lumpur and I think Memphis) that have nice looking transit systems:
