Reply #91: Uhh...explain that. [View All]

[jmowreader]

I'm thinking back to the days of my old Army PU-620 generator set--it had a power source, which was a gasoline engine, driving an alternator that produced the electricity that justified hauling that worn-out piece of shit to the field in the first place.

A generator's a fairly simple device. There's a shaft with magnets attached to it. There are some coils of wire positioned around the shaft. As the magnets pass the coils, the moving magnetic field causes electricity to flow in the coils.

Now! If you're slick, you can make two big discs. One of them has the magnets in it; the wheel studs are pressed into this disc and the wheel is bolted to the studs. The other has the coils, and it's bolted to the car. This is obviously the way to go, because instead of running a shaft from the rear wheels to a machine in the middle of the car, you're doing your generating right out at the wheel. It saves weight, if nothing else. (However, the wheels are still driving the generators--generators have to be driven by something, and in this case it's the black thing that's keeping that corner of the car off the ground.)

If you're really slick you remember that there is NO mechanical difference between a generator, or an alternator, and a motor. All cars have computers in them anymore, and hybrids are especially well-endowed with them. If the computer sees the driver stomp on the gas pedal really hard, it will decide one of three things:

1) the driver is attempting some sort of an evasive maneuver
2) the driver is attempting to pass
or
3) this dumb-ass is racing for pinks in a car with a one-litre engine

and turn the wheel generators into motors.

And if someone would send me ten million dollars, I would develop them a hybrid car that doesn't send engine power directly to the wheels. I'd put three-phase AC motors on the wheels and use the engine to charge the batteries.