Frater Seraphino (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fraterseraphino) wrote,@ 2008-06-03 20:23:00 |
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The car I'm looking forward to seeing how well it does.
Chevy Volt production gets the green light from the GM board
The GM Chevy Volt is an interesting platform because it is not an electric car, exactly, nor is it a hybrid drive train car.
What the Chevy Volt is is an electric car with a gas power generator.
Here's where the concept gets very interesting. You basically plug the Volt in, and the car recharges and uses power from a lithium-ion battery for short trips. When the battery runs low, an electric motor kicks over to recharge the battery and power the electric motors.
This has a number of advantages. It is easier to build than a hybrid: a hybrid car uses a dual-drive train and a complex gear box in order to allow a mix of gas-powered engine and electric motor power to turn the rear axle. An electric car, on the other hand, just uses an electric motor--and because electric motors have a much higher RPM limit and a relatively flat torque across the RPM range, the automatic transmission can be a hell of a lot simpler. (You can almost get away without any transmission gear box at all if you use the right electric motor.)
Second, it means that as the gasoline engine is simply powering a power generator, that component can be swapped out for any mechanism that generates power--from a steam motor to a fuel cell system. And the way the Volt is designed, the gas powered generator won't even have to come on-line until the battery runs low--which would be after 40 miles of travel. For driving around town, you would probably never turn over the gas generator at all.
And third, though some consider it a disadvantage, is that the whole mechanism would be nearly completely silent--which allows you to reduce the weight of the car, because a lot of the sound insulation for many higher-end luxury cars are between the engine compartment and the passenger compartment. No noise, no need to dampen the noise. (Of course the down-side is that silent cars may kill, since the visually impaired cannot hear them.Which is why people are proposing adding speakers to emulate the noise of a gas motor.)
The biggest disadvantage, of course, would be the fact that there would be no relationship between the noise generated by a gasoline engine and the noise generated by the car: once the battery drops below a certain threshold, a gas engine would turn over and rev in relationship to the conditioning state of the battery, not in relationship to the actual speed of the car. Of course I wouldn't have a problem with that--but I suspect it will throw a lot of car reviewers and early adopters off...
Chevy Volt production gets the green light from the GM board
The GM Chevy Volt is an interesting platform because it is not an electric car, exactly, nor is it a hybrid drive train car.
What the Chevy Volt is is an electric car with a gas power generator.
Here's where the concept gets very interesting. You basically plug the Volt in, and the car recharges and uses power from a lithium-ion battery for short trips. When the battery runs low, an electric motor kicks over to recharge the battery and power the electric motors.
This has a number of advantages. It is easier to build than a hybrid: a hybrid car uses a dual-drive train and a complex gear box in order to allow a mix of gas-powered engine and electric motor power to turn the rear axle. An electric car, on the other hand, just uses an electric motor--and because electric motors have a much higher RPM limit and a relatively flat torque across the RPM range, the automatic transmission can be a hell of a lot simpler. (You can almost get away without any transmission gear box at all if you use the right electric motor.)
Second, it means that as the gasoline engine is simply powering a power generator, that component can be swapped out for any mechanism that generates power--from a steam motor to a fuel cell system. And the way the Volt is designed, the gas powered generator won't even have to come on-line until the battery runs low--which would be after 40 miles of travel. For driving around town, you would probably never turn over the gas generator at all.
And third, though some consider it a disadvantage, is that the whole mechanism would be nearly completely silent--which allows you to reduce the weight of the car, because a lot of the sound insulation for many higher-end luxury cars are between the engine compartment and the passenger compartment. No noise, no need to dampen the noise. (Of course the down-side is that silent cars may kill, since the visually impaired cannot hear them.Which is why people are proposing adding speakers to emulate the noise of a gas motor.)
The biggest disadvantage, of course, would be the fact that there would be no relationship between the noise generated by a gasoline engine and the noise generated by the car: once the battery drops below a certain threshold, a gas engine would turn over and rev in relationship to the conditioning state of the battery, not in relationship to the actual speed of the car. Of course I wouldn't have a problem with that--but I suspect it will throw a lot of car reviewers and early adopters off...
