I want one of these cars NOW!!

It has four electric motors, one in each wheel. Just like a locomotive!!

Green Wheels: Volvo's ReCharge

Volvo’s plug-in hybrid concept heralds a wheel-motor revolution.

Volvo's ReCharge features a lithium-polymer battery and four electric motors, one in each wheel. A small flex-fuel engine serves as a backup generator.

Volvo's new concept car looks like a regular C30, but a plug on the front and some very different insides make this a big step forward. Plug-in hybrids will soon change the way we drive, and Volvo's ReCharge concept car foreshadows a handful of technologies that push the envelope.

With the rising cost of fuel and falling cost of batteries, these advanced hybrids seem to become more inevitable with each passing month.

Unlike fully electric cars, plug-in hybrids still retain a small internal combustion engine that serves as a backup generator or power assist. Volvo's ReCharge, which made its public debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2007, pushes beyond other concepts such as the Chevy Volt into even more ambitious territory.

More at...
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=481565&topart=hybrids

I'm so tired of this design. I think the only people who should travel in bubbles are good witches.

Can't they make them sportier? And NOT SUVish, either.

You could buy a Scion B if you don't like "bubble cars", lol..........


That is one seriously UGLY car, BTW.

like the rear wheels on the Honda Insight. Aerodynamics is an important factor in auto design in reducing drag. Air gets into those exposed wheel wells and affects performance. It might look even more like an egg at that point but we might get used to it.

Here we are faced with the end of civilization if we don't get Global Warming under control and deal with Peak Oil, and people are complaining about cars looking like bubbles. Embarrassing and disgraceful.....

Why would I want to spend my hard-earned money on something I wouldn't enjoy.

I didn't comment on the engineering - just the fact that ALL hybrids tend to be ugly, which is an easily fixed issue. Just design something that isn't a box or a bubble. That can't be difficult.

FWIW, my Mustang gets great gas mileage - it's a manual transmission.

Just curious.

For me, it's about leaving a liveable planet for the next generation......

You probably wouldn't approve of my car either - a 20-yr-old Honda Accord.

All the aerodynamics of a brick.

I think our idea of what is beautiful is gonna change.

Gas mileage is going to outweigh all other considerations.

Besides, I like the rounded contours of our Prius. Rounded... kinda breastlike.

is that it is the first major hybrid that was both effective and not ugly as hell.

Srsly, how hard is it to make an efficient car that doesn't look like it was designed by Playskool?

Round or not.

I only buy American cars. They're less expensive to purchase, last just as long (if not longer) than their Japanese counterparts and are less expensive to repair, if and when they need it. This isn't the 80s anymore.

My point, though, was that it can't be that difficult to put the hybrid engineering in a variety of styles that may be more pleasing to everyone.

Of course, I don't know what I'm ranting about. I can't afford to purchase a hybrid, anyway. I think anything over $20,000-$25,000 is far too much to pay for a car.

My Camry was built in Kentucky. Your "American" car was probably built in Mexico.

available with a stick shift.

the pool of cars i could buy gets smaller every year and i don't want much, a decent stereo, cloth seats and a stick shift, is that too much to ask?

Most car companies still offer sticks, but they're increasingly a special order thing because Americans don't buy them. The vast majority of Americans under 30 don't even know HOW to drive them.

when the zombies rise and oh yeah they will escape options will be severely limited for those who only know how to drive automatics.

:7

Seriously, manual transmission cars go for considerably less used than the same model with an automatic..

The market for them is much smaller, particularly in cars that women like, most women won't even try to drive a stick.

Not to mention hypermiling is much more effective with a manual transmission than an automatic.

Manual's also get better gas mileage because you have far more control of the vehicle.

I've been driving sticks for over 20 years and it kills me that I won't be able to drive one once I make the jump to my next vehicle, unless there's a new-generation diesel that will offer that option (plan to buy nothing other than a hybrid or a diesel as I demand nothing less than 50-60 mpg).

"...According to Sugioka, kicking out the transmission yields a 10 to-15 percent spike in efficiency, meaning the car's battery can be that much smaller, and the car will use that much less electricity. Also, having all components built into each motor pushes their peak efficiency into the 95 percent range. ..."

I'm not sure how that works, but it's my understanding that electric cars don't need them. I agree with you, however, that they could make a cheap, small, highly-fuel-efficient car with a five speed transmission that runs on gas. There just doesn't seem to be an incentive to make a low-budget, lightweight, no frills, practical car, as automakers don't see a big profit margin on that kind of vehicle.

option even without a stick or transmission.

and biodiesel?

at those for sure.

They're outmoded and too much work for not enough additional mileage.

but since the pool is getting down so low i suppose eventually one day i will have to.

There are many advanced driving techniques that simply can't be done with a conventional automatic. Also, ever have an automatic transmission crap out on ya'? It's expensive as hell to fix. When my clutch goes out on me (which is extremely unlikely while I own the car, it's good for over 400 lb/ft of torque, it will be about $400 to replace. I also get a good deal better fuel economy in my car then my friend who owns the same car with an auto. On top of that, my car makes a good deal more power than his because it's heavily modified, I still average around 28 MPG while he gets 25. All those reasons and more make manuals the smarter buy. I have to deal with an hour of DC traffic every day and I'll still never buy another auto as long as I live.

300 MPG

www.aptera.com







Looks like a sporty UFO to me. Available in California later this year.

No...

a gallon. It one hell of a lot more attractive then every "my dick is tiny but my truck is HUGE" vehicle out there.

cool when you get in! Also, it charges the batteries some.



Soon they'll have a plug-in hybrid and larger vehicles in the future.

:D Geek chic, baby! :D Hummer schmummer...give me outside-the-box forward-thinking technology. This is really cool, like a little spaceship you can drive!

That's a gorgeous car-electric or not.

0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds is like what a 500 horsepower V8 sportscar that gets 11 mpg does, but this car is totally electric with 220 miles per charge. If the electric car hadn't been killed by the oil and auto industries in the 90s there would be millions of cars like this on the roads today.

That car costs nearly as much as my house.

Do you strap them to the top of the car? This is useless to ordinary Americans! This is an expensive toy for rich people. No other comment needed!

Hub-motors have a history going all the way back to the 1800's, and there's one consistent problem with them...physics. The more unsprung weight you put on each wheel, the more resistant it is going to be to directional changes. When you hit a pothole in one of these, it's going to feel like you hit a sinkhole simply because the weight is going to make that wheel kick HARD. Unsprung weight is pretty universally recognized as a BAD THING in the automotive industry...that's why any decent car nowadays has aluminum rims instead of heavier steel. Lighter wheels cause the car to ride better and corner easier.

Module inboard as an integral part of the chassis, centering the mass of the individual motors more to the centerline of the vehicle, and then connect them to the drive wheels using a half-shaft?

That would solve the problem of unsprung mass, which I agree, would definitely slow steering and have an adverse effect on the overall ride.

Great idea, though. The torque from directly-driven electric motors precludes the need for any transmission, as the motors themselves would be infinitely variable, to their design limits. If they made it light enough, that thing would launch like a rocket.

I often wondered how difficult would it be to engineer a Class 8 vehicle (tractor-trailer type) using this same technology. Use a diesel/electric motor like a locomotive for a constant electric supply/recharge, and have directly driven drive wheels with regenerative braking capacity.

No need for a transmission as such, and huuuuge amounts of torque.

If you placed the motors against the chassis and connected them to the wheels via short axles, you'd achieve the same thing without the handling problems. The downside is that you're cutting efficiency very slightly...those axles will need to be made of durable steel because of the stresses involved, which increases the amount of weight in the vehicle and the mass of the rotating drive assemblies. Still, I think the loss would be small enough to make it a worthwhile tradeoff.

By the way, the very first car that Ferdinande Porsche ever designed was a "Mixte" hybrid. Waaaay back in 1901 he coupled a gas burning engine to an electric generator, which drove four hub mounted electric motors. The car actually set a land speed record back in its time (37 MPH), but had a nasty habit of hammering its drivers to a pulp because of the weight distribution.

Keeping the mass of the rotors and calipers off of a wheel mount and reducing unsprung weight, and bringing that weight closer to the center of mass.

I remember reading about the Porsche hybrid, it was fabulous in a straight line, partially due to the gyroscopic effect of the rotating eclectric motors, but was an ungodly mess trying to turn at speed in any way. The thing just wanted to go straight, and all the poor driver had helping him turn was strong shoulders.

Direct drive by an electric motor would be the cheapest design, as it would be the simplest, and I realize that engineering in lighter weight, highly efficient DC electric motors has come a long way in just a few short years, but a small trade-off in efficiency for the loss of power transmission through the use of a drive shaft would be more than offset by the overall increase in handling characteristics and driveability.

I would imagine if my 14 liter 460hp Cummins diesel with 1850 ft/lbs of torque can transmit that power through a single drive shaft, there would be a sufficiently strong, light weight solution to drive shafts for each driven wheel from an electric motor.

:D :rofl:

Just goofin' on ya...
;-)

And afterwords play bass at a local jazz club. You never know what they may end up doing!


:crazy: :silly:

It's the PML Flightlink company. Their most powerful motor weighs about 55 lbs. I was wondering about the handling with that weight also. It seems to me that an inboard motor would give a better ride but the wheel motor would be easier to retrofit. I'd probably go with a motor mounted inboard if I ever get the chance to build an electric car.

Added on edit:I forgot, the motors function as brakes for the car too, so they do save some pounds that way. It may not be that huge of difference.

I suppose if you added up the weight of four disks, calipers, and and attendant braking lines, fluid reservoirs and valving, it might come fairly close to that 55lb total weight number per wheel.

I'm sure Volvo engineers took adverse handling characteristics of the unsprung weight under serious critical review, and found found that there was no detriment by placing the motors right at the wheel mount.

Those electric motors look like they pack a large punch in a very small package.



I'm almost, almost glad to see skyrocketing oil as it gives the opening to modern, efficient technologies to take transportation away from those that have monopolized it for so long.

Change or die will be the driver of the manufacturers of these newer modes of transportation; adapt and improvise, or be left as an historical footnote to the industry.

I've daydreamed about building my own electric car based on a Chevy Geo Metro. I did some research and they're one of the lightest cars manufactured for sales in the US. There are a lot of EV conversion kits available already for them.

The problem, I see, with running dual direct drive electric front wheel drive motors is that most electrics powerful enough are too long to be mounted perpendicular to the wheels in a real small car. However, two of these flat motors could be mounted under the hood. I've tried to find a distributer because I'm curious about their cost but haven't found one yet with these motors listed yet.

Added on edit: Another weight that they take out is the CV joint and shaft on the front wheels. They claim that it only adds 2 kg over the original weight. Maybe these would really work well in the wheels and the engine compartment can then serve as battery space.

So I reluctantly (VERY reluctantly) have to question whether electric cars are the answer. If we can get our solar technology together, that would be awesome, I just don't want more nuclear to generate the electricity to plug my car in.

Know what I mean?

I heard Thom Hartmann say on one of his shows that cars originally ran on alchohol! I can imaging a future where some of our energy comes from solar panels, cars running on alchohol we generate with our own stills....

Just thinkin' out loud here. Trust me, I'd love to have electric cars if we can work it out.

whereas you could charge your car by the sun anytime anywhere, I'd go for it in a heartbeat.

:thumbsup:

You could paint your entire car with it, from top to bottom and perhaps recharge your battery by parking it outside for eight hours while you're at work. Unfortunately, this technology is not advancing very quickly, relative to the urgent need.

In New York, for example, it would take 20 hours to charge a Prius battery one time. Since the sun isn't up for 20 hours a day, you'd have to charge your battery over a two day period just to get a single battery-only trip out of it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3093985#3099811

than gasoline-burning cars. When electricity is generated using nuclear or natgas, they're quite a bit cleaner.

And they'll remain cleaner. Internal combustion cars typically get dirtier as they age; electric cars get cleaner as their source of energy gets cleaner (based on prior additions of filters and converters to existing power plants).

Debunking the Myth of EVs and Smokestacks
http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf

There's no way that nuclear can be the answer. It's got to be evolved solar, something that doesn't create radioactive waste that stays toxic for 96,000 years.

I question the viability of natural gas as well, but I'm not as dead set against it.

Other than that, I'm in agreement.

but the fact is life on Earth won't be around for 500 years if we don't find something to deal with global warming and find it now.

There is simply not enough energy in wind and solar power to meet the needs of everyone on the planet, unless we convince everyone to get by with drastically less energy than they're using now. Ain't gonna happen.

I'd love to see solar powered cars. That's the most practical way to fuel a car, IMO.

I'd even elect to have a plant right next to my house.

This is what I am looking at right now.

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/index.php

I'm telling ya, the public needs to get past the false idea that electric cars have no power. The phoenix car has 590 ft-lbs of torque. A honda civic gas has 100-130, and most sports cars have 200-300 ft-lbs. Unless this car weighs 3 times what normal cars do, it will explode off the line if you want it too.

Did you find anywhere on there about how much they are expected to be?

Affordable considering what new cars cost now.

My mechanic has one and gets more than 70 miles per gallon. They aren't exciting cars and don't accelerate very fast but they do the job. I don't think we've fully explored the limits of regular gas powered cars yet, but it seems that people have been brainwashed into thinking they need to sit behind the steering wheel of a tank.

350 miles to the charge. 10-minute recharge. Solar glass. On-board wifi.

http://www.zapworld.com/zap-x-crossover

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said on the Matthews show about 5 years ago, that ALL cars and trucks can be made to run at 40 mpg fuel efficiency! AND, that we have had this technology since the 70's! I am getting a little tired of all these tiny little cars. When we can have standard size or medium size run at 40mpg at a minimum.

What the hell happened to this technology?!

Having lived in Europe for 10 years I found that "smaller" cars were just as efficient at hauling stuff around as the huge boats that are extant in the US.

Besides, you have to take into account the whole power to weight ratio. Bigger car - more power to get it to move. Bigger (heavier) car=lower gas mileage.

Physics is a wonderful thing but something that RFK Jr probably doesn't understand.

we could replace every gas-guzzler on our highways with Electric cars in 3-5 years . . .

Congress could raise a corporation to do this if GM wants to continue to be allied with the oil
industry --- and we could subsidize both manufacture and purchase -- !!!

Let's go America ---

PLUS . . . nationalize the oil industry --- !!

AND . . . "Windfall profits tax on the oil industry" --- !!!

I saw one of the RAV-4 EVs on the road near me yesterday! I think some were allowed to keep them.

and crushed them . . . !!!

Can you imagine this? On lease, but they must have been at least $18,000-$20,000 cars?

And there were 4,000 or 5,000 of them???

Destroying these cars prevented a big hit and the threat of an even bigger hit in the future . . .
on the oil industry pocketbook ---

GM working for the oil indistry ---

American free enterprise? BS!!!

The special features are as good as the main documentary.

:puke:

flytheroad.com

Get a smart car with a motorcycle engine in it (they're called "Diablos")

I read about it on fark.

Here is a google link to videos and what-not.

Any internal combustion engine that uses gasoline can be converted to use diesel, which also can use cooking oil.

This thing does a quarter mile in 13 seconds and can keep up with a Ferrari.

That's right...fossil fucking fuels.

two others, namely nat gas and coal. What happens when we've used up all the finite energy before we can establish a renewable one? Nevermind foul atmosphere, warming climate, and acidic oceans.

production does compared to the slim risk of a problem from nuclear, I'm willing to take the risk. Coal emissions do far more damage every year than nuclear has ever done in this country.

Electric Motorcycle:



http://www.electricmotorsport.com/store/ems_electric_motorcycle_gpr-s.php

This is what I want for my next commuter vehicle. Freeway capable, range perfect for a commuter, and not a bad price - under $10k fully loaded w/ available options and delivered. :bounce:

fully electric, top speed 125mph +, a mere $50,000 CDN (including charger)

Sid

I'm not even a car guy, but... damn. I hope they come in different colors.