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Please, I would like this to be a serious discussion.
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Sorry for chuckling, but for anyone to have a
serious discussion, there needs to be a serious
subject to discuss... bottom-feeders who sell these miracle-cure devices rely on consumer unawareness, Iamian is our good friend and has sage advice for you...
Alright already, enough with nitpicking, let's try for a serious discussion. Pioneers, such as you in 2001, showed it was possible to purchase a drivable, comfortable, reliable vehicle that approached 70 mpg at times, and certainly doubled whatever mileage the best car in your average parking lot was getting at any time. Honda was wise to use all the technology available 10-12 years ago to make the Insight... even though at the time, there was no pressing need for a fuel-efficient car (gas was at $0.89 a gallon for our first recorded fill-up!), and by its very nature, the Insight was to be a very limited-production, loss-leader exercise. Surely, if they went to the trouble to shave weight by, say, using a
carbon-fiber oil dipstick, they probably spent a buck or two researching each and every gas-saving gadget out there.
Regenerative braking and the capture of wasted heat is just one small step towards conserving energy, but it doesn't save [convert]
that much energy and even if it did, at what overall cost? There's enough to recharge the battery slightly, but the battery does not have enough capacity or power to drive the car great distances. You could get bigger batteries at greater cost, reliability, and weight penalties, but why? It's a delicate balance, one very well suited to everyday ownership and cost constraints. NRG can be changed, but not easily or reliably or cheaply (at least by standards required in a mass-produced product, like an automobile, that needs to be reliable and virtually bulletproof for consumers to drive daily even if abused).
Kudos to Volvo for trying to develop new technology, let's see how well they do, although I fear, without the deep coffers (hah!) of FoMoCo, if indeed Ford jettisons them soon, just like they just discarded Rover and Jaguar due to, er,
shallowing coffers, Volvo may not be able to spend the time and effort necessary to remain competitive, much less come up with experimental cars. I
so hope I'm wrong about this...
I am also intrigued by (and thought about years ago) the principle behind the Chevy Volt, where a very small, fuel-efficient ICE would be used to power a generator that would produce enough power to recharge batteries and/or motivate electric hub motors at one or more wheels of the vehicle. I didn't see how it could be made to work for long-range cruising, but apparently GM is working with batteries that can take the abuse of deep discharge and recharge cycles, and continue to work reliably, while maintaining weight and space constraints. Can it be done and will you see it at a Chevy dealership in the near future? That's the secret, to make something that can be warrantied, a customer can drive every day, and doesn't cost as much as an aircraft carrier...
There
is no perpetual motion, alas, although some people swear it's possible... if I could make a car that runs on pure electric, with solar panels, regenerative braking, heat-to-electric transfer technology, a generator attached to the rear wheels that produces power while the car is in motion, with air-powered spinners to create more power, and maybe even with piezo-electric hand cranks for the passenger to recharge and top off the batteries... I could make a billion dollars!
HHO project
