Originally posted by warmonger:
With that said, give me a gas turbine engine powering a big azzed generator. Add a few batteries for storage, but not too much. Then use one electric motor per wheel with very short axles and humongous power cables to keep down resistance.
The turbine produces all the electric power you need, burns clean as hell, can be run on alcohol and still burn clean, is light weight since it isn't fancy and is optimized to run at one specific rpm and the load is varied by fuel modulation.
This gives you these benefits:
- drivetrain mass distributed throughout the car
-low overall mass
-AWD capability
-ABS, Traction/stability controls just by varying motor speeds
-Regenerative breaking
- short axles keep the motors on the frame with unsprung mass low for better road handling.
- extremely flat torque curve from electric motors and with high current capacity allows higher performance.
This eliminates:
-Most drive axle weights since there is a motor at every wheel
- almost no transmission components gears and stuff to transfer torque.
- fluid weights
There's probably more advantages but that is what I can think of now.
I always daydreamed that the motorcycle in Akira worked like this, just with two wheels and the electric motors actually IN the wheels. And the other benefit is that you can have computer-controlled active yaw/stability control that's two steps beyond what gets done now, modulating individual wheel speed on the fly. You could even pivot around your own axis like a friggin' tank.
"Think of it, if you like, as a librarian with a G-string under the tweed." Clarkson on the Mondeo.
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