Revolutionizing Electric Cars: A New Innovative Idea

In summary, the idea proposed is to use magnets in the rotating area of the wheels of an electric car to induce a current in a surrounding coil. However, this would not be enough to power the car as it would essentially be a perpetual motion machine. Hybrid cars already use a similar concept, called regenerative braking, to put energy back into the battery while slowing down. The proposed idea would also add load to the car and would not be efficient due to friction and air resistance. Overall, the best solution for electric cars is to use a combination of electric motors and internal combustion engines for short periods of low speed or stop/start driving.
  • #1
||spoon||
228
0
new? electric car idea...!

Hey guys,

I don't have any formal education in engineering (yet :D) but i think i have had a reasonable (and original??) idea for powering electric cars and I was wondering if it could possibly work. Here goes...

My idea is to have some sort of magnets in an area of the wheels of the car which is rotating. And then to have some sort of coil surrounding it so that as the wheel spins a current would be induced in the wire.

I thought of this and wondered wether once the car gets moving (either through a combustion engine or electric etc.) would this current created bu the wheel movement be enough to keep the car running as an electric motor would.

There are probably some HUGE flaws in this, was just wondering what anyone thought. If it wouldn't work could you tell me why? (there are probably heaps of reasons so pick a biggy lol)

Thanks alot,
-||spoon||
 
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  • #2
I thought hybrid cars already do something like this. But I'm not sure.
 
  • #3
on really? Anyone else know if this is the case?
 
  • #4
||spoon|| said:
I thought of this and wondered wether once the car gets moving (either through a combustion engine or electric etc.) would this current created bu the wheel movement be enough to keep the car running as an electric motor would.
If you mean powering the car by an electric motor and driving the electric motor from a generator on the same wheel you are driving then this is a perpetual motion machine - good luck with that.

what electirc and some hybrid cars do is called regenerative braking.
Instead of using brakes to slow the car down (either because you are going down a hill or coming to stop) they run the motors as generators and put energy back into the battery. So the energy that would have been wasted as heat can be re-used.
Because this slows the vehicle it should be obvious why you can't use this as the only source of power.
 
  • #5
Yeh ok I see, I didn't know that was what happened in hybrids. Meh nevermind.
 
  • #6
Don't give up thinking about things just because that idea isn't Earthshaking. I doubt that any Science Advisor or Mentor on this site didn't do the same thing several times. You wouldn't believe some of the crap that I came up with in my younger years (and still do, once in a while). Keep up with the ideas; eventually, one of them will be great.
 
  • #7
I thought you were going to go on about how your idea for a perpetual motion was different to all the others and would work!
 
  • #8
Danger: I won't don't worry haha. When I was younger I hadn't heard of the magrail (is that what its called?) and was really excited that id come up with something brilliant until my dad told me it already existed.

Mgb_phys: I said i hadn't studied engineering yet, not that i was mentally retarded lol.

Also how do you quote more than one person??
 
  • #9
Mgb_phys: I said i hadn't studied engineering yet, not that i was mentally retarded lol.
Then you might like to join in the many, 'plane takign off from a conveyor belt' discussions :approve:
Don't worry most of us have brilliant ideas only to be told they are on page X of the catalogue.

Also how do you quote more than one person??
You can just copy the text and put it inside "["QUOTE"]" "["/QUOTE"]" boxes
 
  • #10
Dont get me started on the plane conveyor belt thing... God that's annoying. I tried explaining why it would take off to a friend for about an hour. Still don't know if he gets it lol.

Thanks for the quote help :)
 
  • #11
Your talking about using the axles as the shaft essentially of the Generator? It would be like adding alternator/s along your shaft, so as your moving your generating a current. The thing is about generators, that they add load. So depending on the build of the Generator, it could be a great idea.

The reverse part, would need to have a relay that disconnects the Generator while reversing, (unless generators still produce a current if they run opposite rotation?, I'm not sure actually lol)

Also, if they brake, than you'd have to remove probably a few things (tires/brakes/hub/maybe upper/lower control arms/shocks/struts etc.

If you guys read his post more thouroughly he said
||spoon|| said:
gets moving (either through a combustion engine or electric etc.)
-||spoon||
so Its not using the motor, and generator perpetual energy thought everybody has atleast once until his 5th grade teacher drops a bomb on that little world and sends the poor kid back to the stone age.

Its like I said, he wants to use a different means to rotate that little shaft on the alternator, pretty much (to grosely simplify it). I would say the axle is not the worst place for it eh?!
 
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  • #12
about the perpetual motion thing... What i imagined this thing doing was keeping the car at constant speed, not accelerating. So i suppose you would use another meand of power aswell, but only to accelerate.

I think this is probably still perpetual motion though (because of friction and air resistance ??) so i think it is still impossible?
 
  • #13
I'm afraid so - friction is a real pain sometimes!

The big win for electric hybrids is for short periods at low speeds or stop/start driving.
This is especially good for large vehicles like buses and delivery trucks.
Petrol/Diesel engines aren't very efficent at low speeds while an electric motor generates it's highest torque at zero speed - so you can use a smaller internal combustion engine and an electric motor for starting to move.
 
  • #14
just to add a bit more, when you put a coil around the axle to produce current, that current also produce a reactive force against the stator magnet, so you need to provide more energy to keep the axle(rotor) rotating, and only if working at 100% efficiency you ll get the same energy back which you put as extra at the first place. so finally the result is an over solved problem(which i usually do).
but nevertheless, the fact that you thought of such things without studying about them is a great start. keep on
 
  • #15
Every car I've seen has 0% efficiency getting from point A and returning to point A. Some just use more gas doing it.
 
  • #16
The idea of an electric car as a viable alternative to fossil fuels should be killed, unless there is a shown gain in total energy usage, no matter what scheme is forwarded, electricity still has to be generated to charge these electric vehicles, even recycling the waste from the batteries may be more environmentally costly if not energy costly.
 
  • #17
But Wolram, the Electric Car will be a very useful device, fulfilling an important emotional niche to the eager consumer.

A recent and noteworthy commercial advertising a hybrid SUV indicates the importance among numerous consumers to be seen as dedicated to preserving the 'environment'.

In this particular commercial, our hero quietly goes about his tasks, never advertising the fact that his car is a hybrid. This frees the buyer of these cars from the humiliating task of blatently advertising their moral superiority themselves, as the commercial has done it for them.

They can safely maintain the myth that their actions are altruistic. Nothing is further from the truth, of course.

It doen't matter if these devices preform any useful task--or are even more damaging --to the rest of humanity, only that they be perceived do so by the greaterunwashed, in the never-ending quest to be seen as superior.

So how's your carbon footprint today?
 
  • #18
wolram said:
The idea of an electric car as a viable alternative to fossil fuels should be killed, unless there is a shown gain in total energy usage, no matter what scheme is forwarded, electricity still has to be generated to charge these electric vehicles, even recycling the waste from the batteries may be more environmentally costly if not energy costly.
Not so fast with the dagger, there are two fundamental reasons why E cars are theoretically far superior to current vehicles. (1)The electric motor is a very good method of producing mechanical energy, 90 -95% efficient, plus you can recapture braking energy once you've introduced a means of storing energy (batteries). The best any heat based engine can ever do is ~40%. Yes the energy has to come from somewhere but that's also the case w/ existing cars. The point is you get far more miles per unit of energy w/ the E car, aka miles per gallon for existing cars. (2) The pure electric car has zero emissions to the atmosphere. Again, there will be emissions at the central power plant if its fossil, but those can be made much more efficient than cars and can have ellaborate means to capture the emissions, or the fossil plant may eventually become a renewables based or nuclear plant thus zero emissions. All of the solid parts any car, batteries whatever, have to eventually be recycled regardless of the car type so that's really a wash.

Problems: the battery technology is not quite there yet, and neither is the electric power generation and distribution required to run all E cars. Thus hybrids will be the way to go for sometime to come.
 
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  • #19
mheslep said:
Not so fast with the dagger, there are two fundamental reasons why E cars are theoretically far superior to current vehicles. (1)The electric motor is a very good method of producing mechanical energy, 90 -95% efficient, plus you can recapture braking energy once you've introduced a means of storing energy (batteries). The best any heat based engine can ever do is ~40%. Yes the energy has to come from somewhere but that's also the case w/ existing cars. The point is you get far more miles per unit of energy w/ the E car, aka miles per gallon for existing cars. (2) The pure electric car has zero emissions to the atmosphere. Again, there will be emissions at the central power plant if its fossil, but those can be made much more efficient than cars and can have ellaborate means to capture the emissions, or the fossil plant may eventually become a renewables based or nuclear plant thus zero emissions. All of the solid parts any car, batteries whatever, have to eventually be recycled regardless of the car type so that's really a wash.

Problems: the battery technology is not quite there yet, and neither is the electric power generation and distribution required to run all E cars. Thus hybrids will be the way to go for sometime to come.

Turbo disels are competative with hybrids in gas milage. I imagine this is true with or without all the many other tweeks used to hybrid manufactures improve milage. Regenerative braking is nearly useless. In designing an electric vehicle, I've found I can recapture about 5%--maybe. In my application it isn't worth the extra luggage. And all this tweaking comes at a cost. The market forces would be a much better indicator of overall usefullness after subtracting the legislative bias.

Electric power distributed to your automobile by high tension wires from elsewhere is not as efficient as imagined. Great amounts of energy are lost in transmission and conversion. If cost is any indicator --and it should be if the environment of your friends, family, and community are included in your definition of "the environment", upon reciept it is less efficient than combustion. Ask anyone who has had the privilege of paying for an electric heating bill one winter and a gas bill the next in similar years.

Let's talk about the "carbon foot print" the "environmental impact", and the fuel efficiency of automobile storage batteries. Maybe you can answer some key questions. What's their lifetime? What's their enviromental impact on mining, producing, and displosal or recycling? What's their 'carbon footpring' in fossile fuel to produce them from the mine to the consumer? How much of their true value is hidden by governmental interference?

About the lifetime of these batteries. The auto dealers won't tell you what it is, or fewer would buy their cars. Sometime in the next couple of years, we will start getting these answers as they begin to fail. These things will cost a good chunk of change to replace. When the cost of replacement becomes better known the market, the resale value of the vehicle will plumet driving it's value toward scrap prices. What's the enviromental-impact-and-carbon-footprint on early retirement scrap?

That's just the batteries. For all the gadgetry to make a hybrid vehicle fuel efficient, one can ask the same questions.

Many of these question will apply to purely electric vehicles. As I've stated before, contemporarily it's really not important to the advocates that the answers to these questions wash-out in favor of electric powered vehicles or against, or the answers would be much more widely known. But what we find is the proponents don't really know the questions, let alone the answers. It seems more important to appear devout than be devout.

-deCraig, student of contempory anthropology
 
  • #20
Phrak said:
Turbo disels are competative with hybrids in gas milage.
Thats incorrect even now, and in the context of most electric cars to come w/ some hybrid backup its wildly incorrect.

Regenerative braking is nearly useless. In designing an electric vehicle, I've found I can recapture about 5%--maybe. In my application it isn't worth the extra luggage. And all this tweaking comes at a cost. The market forces would be a much better indicator of overall usefullness after subtracting the legislative bias.
Wildly incorrect. Regen. braking is also used in trains purely because it makes economic sense to so.

...upon reciept it is less efficient than combustion.
No. Power plants + E distribution is still more efficient than internal combustion.

..automobile storage batteries. Maybe you can answer some key questions. What's their lifetime? What's their enviromental impact on mining, producing, and displosal or recycling? What's their 'carbon footpring' in fossile fuel to produce them from the mine to the consumer? How much of their true value is hidden by governmental interference?

About the lifetime of these batteries. The auto dealers won't tell you what it is, or fewer would buy their cars. Sometime in the next couple of years, we will start getting these answers as they begin to fail. These things will cost a good chunk of change to replace. When the cost of replacement becomes better known the market, the resale value of the vehicle will plumet driving it's value toward scrap prices. What's the enviromental-impact-and-carbon-footprint on early retirement scrap?

That's just the batteries.
As I said above, the batteries are not quite there yet. They're close and with a little more improvement E cars and other types of E transportation are likely to take off.
 
  • #21
mheslep,

(trains are not autombiles. I actually have a real world braking problem to solve, if you think you're up to it. I wish to see how effectively I can brake without frying the batteries or incorporating excessive mass. You need to know the more subtle characteristics of lithium-ion cells, proficient in voltage/current regulator design, and some basic physics, and engineering design experience)

OK, i watch people behave, and you by certitude claim to be the car and energy expert.

With numbers to back it up right?

You will get your alternate energy automobile, of course. That will be driven in a fair market by the price of crude helped along in some small part by legislative subsidies in addition to technological improvements, but expecting technological magic bullets is a bit like expecting the stock market will go up based on past preformance.

It would help, if you want to be an expert to know the basics of a few games: economics and marketing, electrical engineering, thermodyamics--and some general engineering.

I would truly like to see some honest numbers. I do hear a lot of wild claims, that upon examination are simply falacious exagerations by enthusiests in this, as in any other socio-political issue.
 
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  • #22
Phrak said:
mheslep,

(trains are not autombiles.
That was in response to the suggestion that regen. braking was only being used because of government regulation / interference, and that their use would not survive on its own in the free market, to paraphrase your post. As there are no 'cafe standards' on diesel electric train engines, one can't claim their use of regen. braking is only due to govt. interference.
I do hear a lot of wild claims,
As for the rest of this, I pointed out two posts up some characteristics (numbers) of E cars that make them promising in the prior post, and I have pointed out in your post where your numerous claims (without numbers) were wrong: 'turbo diesel comparable to hybrids' and 'internal combustion more efficient than electric after distribution'. Otherwise I have no agenda for E cars saving the world. Burden of proof is on you.

Also, if you are interested, I and others have posted quite a bit of detail, backed up by reference, regards the feasibility of E cars on https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=210919".
 
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  • #23
ank_gl said:
just to add a bit more, when you put a coil around the axle to produce current, that current also produce a reactive force against the stator magnet, so you need to provide more energy to keep the axle(rotor) rotating, and only if working at 100% efficiency you ll get the same energy back which you put as extra at the first place. so finally the result is an over solved problem(which i usually do).
but nevertheless, the fact that you thought of such things without studying about them is a great start. keep on


Yes, anyone that has played with a dc generator in science class knows how hard it is to spin when you have a larger load you are powering. This is the Cemf - counter electromotive force. Even driving a motor with an EMF force, you get a force back because that motor "acts like" a generator as well.
 
  • #24
||spoon|| said:
Danger: I won't don't worry haha. When I was younger I hadn't heard of the magrail (is that what its called?) and was really excited that id come up with something brilliant until my dad told me it already existed.

Mgb_phys: I said i hadn't studied engineering yet, not that i was mentally retarded lol.

Also how do you quote more than one person??

Whoa that's weird about that magrail, youre talking about the mono rail that uses magnets to float right? Haha I thought of that idea too, then found out the Japanese beat me to it already haha. I was still in middle school at the time.
 

What is the new innovative idea for revolutionizing electric cars?

The new innovative idea for revolutionizing electric cars is to use wireless charging technology to eliminate the need for traditional charging stations.

How does this new idea work?

The new idea works by using a technology called inductive charging, which uses electromagnetic fields to transfer energy from a charging pad to the car's battery.

What are the benefits of using this new technology?

There are several benefits to using wireless charging for electric cars. It eliminates the need for traditional charging stations, reduces the risk of electric shock, and allows for more convenient and efficient charging.

Are there any drawbacks to this new technology?

One potential drawback is the cost of implementing the technology, as it may require significant infrastructure changes. There may also be concerns about the efficiency of wireless charging compared to traditional methods.

Is this technology currently being used in electric cars?

While the technology is still in its early stages, there are some companies that have already started implementing wireless charging for electric cars. However, it is not yet widely available and there is ongoing research and development to improve its effectiveness and efficiency.

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