click me

 

makes you wonder what kind of cars will be on the road 30, 40, 50 years from now. How do you soup up a car with no engine? What will happen to are rotary? What will happen to the piston engine? Boggles the mind.

 

I'm still convinced that a combustion hydrogen engine will be the answer over the fuel cells.

 

didnt mazda have a hydrogen rotary program? i believe they even had some working concept cars a while ago... does anyone have more info?

 

here is a nice article:

http://www.inter.net.il/~m-design/green/mazda.html

 

of course there are still motors, they're just electric, and it's very simple to soup up an electric-motor'd car (in the way you'd tune up the system), it'd just not be cheap: you supply more power to the motors, get a CVT which has an even broader range of gearing (as you want to have the electric motors turning as slowly as possible at all times), getting motors which are more efficient (better conductors) which would let you either have more torque for the same mass, or less mass for the same torque, having better coolign systems so the motors can run at lower temps (better conductivity)... it's probably a far less complicated picture than the IC motor. the biggest problem is cheaply generating enough power to feed into them...

hey, some electricity-smart guys, tell me, would very low ampherage with very high voltage be better than high amps and low volts, as far as running an electric motor goes??

IC engines, if fuel cells take over (which they won't: constantly cost prohibitive), then they'll simply become antiquated dreams of "cheap performance" enthusiasts, just like leaded gasoline.

 

hoooooooly ****... if Mazda put work into that concept (instead of a handful of guys), they could really REALLY have something... WOW... 80% of a gasoline engine, huh??? jeezus...

but, i'm still wondering if water injection into the combustion chamber would help boost thermal efficiency (and thus torque) in a hydrogen engine where the water droplets shouldn't interfere much with the combustion...??

 

http://www.inter.net.il/~m-design/green/mazda.html


good article, but it was referring to testing back in 1991, so what about recently? is the hydrogen rotary still in any sort of R&D?

hmmm....hydrogen pwred rx-8...or even rx-7...

 

doh! why couldn't you ask me this in a month when I actually take the class!...:p

From gut feeling I would say more current => stronger B field => stronger Fb (force due to B).

 

i asked the most electrically smart guy in oregon and he said high volts and low amps is the way to go.

 

dam, stupid gut feeling! ..:p well, guess I'll wait for that class...hehe

 

:D wicked just like i thought: low electron "velocity" = less "frictional" losses

 

you're talking about current proportional to propagation? I guess that explains IIR.

EDIT: Also I just thought of something. Running at higher voltage will increase efficiency (by less wire heating, dunno if that offsets core losses), but at a cost. A high voltage motor is larger, heavier, cost more to buy, cost more to rewind and takes longer to rewind. So there are economic constraints to High V Low I, but in general V>I is better than I>V

Also you will not really be getting more performance. For example,

100HP 1800RPM 230/460Volts 228/114Amps 405T Frame 1277Lbs. Cost $2800
Repair/Rewind $1399 3days

100HP 1800RPM 2300/4160Volts 30/17Amps 447/9T Frame 2800Lbs. Cost $15,100
Rewind $7550 7days

Power needed to run both engines are roughly the same @230V vs. 2300V. @4160V vs. 460V the High V actually uses more power.

 

The saddest part about going from IC engines to fuel cells and electric motors is that electrical engineers will be designing the drive train, instead of mechanical engineers, like me! :D

But seriously, fuel cells are the future. The biggest problem is makeing them cheap enough for the average consumer. Also, producing H2 requires enormous amounts of energy and/or pollution. You end up spending ten times more energy on producing hydrogen than the amount of energy you get from the hydrogen. We need to figure out a way to produce hydrogen much more efficiently.

As for us mechanical engineers, we can still design the chassis, suspension and fuel containment systems :D

 

read this thread and the one of hercs that i linked to:D

 

The problem remains that these fuel cells cost upwards of 90 thousand dollars to make.

The reason is because they use sensitive and expensive materials like.... PLATINUM!

The fuel cells are also more prone to weathery conditions, specially cold and also extreme hot.

This is why I'd still say that a hydrogen COMBUSTION engine (even with the combustion power loss that's signifigant) is the way of the future; fuel cell technology is nice but not very applicable nor will it become affordable due to the expensive materials that are used to make up the fuel cells.

 

... i agree completely... fuel cells are a pipe dream, prohibitted by cost.

 

what about city buses with hydrogen reformers on board and hydrogen ic engines with water injection:D