I been thinking, and it seems to me our future vehicles would be best suited with a small 1~ liter diesel engine turning a generator to power 4 electric motors at the wheels of the car/truck, just like locomotives use. Advantages would be significantly increased fuel economy, AWD, no transmission and axle weight(offset by weight of batteries, longer lasting diesel engine, easier and cheaper to repair due to small engine size, fewer moving parts, and decreased complexity, regenerative braking, significantly reduced emmissions, less noise, no idling when not moving.Seems the advantages would vastly outweigh the disadvantagesDoes anyone build such a vehicle?
Diesel would be a better alternative both in that high compression engines are more efficient though they also produce more nitrous oxides and diesels can run on biofuels more readily. However you have the problem that you would need a sophisticated computer controlled diesel to avoid the valve clatter while idle that turns a lot of people off. With a full hybrid, the clatter may be minimized but if you wanted the advanced engines, you would have to buy them from Mercedes or Volkswagon. Usually for kit cars, an industrial diesel motors are used ( these are motors designed to run cement mixers, tractors and other equipment ), but the result is a lot of clatter from the valves. Hub motors are in wide use, especially with hybrid buses but they have the down side of being unsprung weight so they severely hamper handling. Trying to do it without hub motors and you might as well go back to the central engine concept. Also the hub motors exist in bus sizes at the moment. Most regenerative braking options are electrical and can only recover a small portion of the power. The Urba-Electric of the 70's used a stepper motor controlled mechanical CVT between the motor and the wheel thereby having mechanical regenerative braking that had higher returns, unfortunately the commercial Electromatic transmission is no longer on the market and such industrial CVT's are limited in their power ratings as they usually used a rubber belt. Hybrids are interesting but they are inherently redundant. They're hardly the ecological salvation for the planet.
Volvo is developing a system like you're describing. Hybrids are just a bridge technology to full electric drives. The back-end progress on electrics is greater than most people think. They will keep extending the range, reducing the charging time and lightening the batteries. Once those technologies reach mass-market the other more marketable aspects of electrics like their lack of maintenance needs, quiet operation, and far superior handling with do the rest. At that point hybrid technology will be relegated to buses and other large vehicles, along with trains where it's been for quite some time.
Hybrids will be replaced with electrical cars.
Hydrogen appears promising, however continues to be very so much an unproven science. Natural fuel/methane/CNG works nice in spark engines in situation of gas, however I'm no longer definite if we might produce ample of it to force a nation. Biodiesel is right here, demonstrated, effective, blank, low-cost and has been for decades. Why ninety five% of autos global are not already burning it's past me. Hybrids are vain - interval. E85 or one hundred% ethanol is a well method to lower our dependancy to grease, however no longer a lot more than that. It's only a bandaid. Steam is thoroughly inefficient - that is why steam autos stop being produced a century in the past. Electric autos appear like a well method to pass, however provided that that electrical power is coming from a blank supply like wind, sun or hydroelectric vigor crops. Burning coal or oil to cost up your environmentally pleasant vehicle could form of eleminate the factor. One factor's for definite - there shall be an afternoon while the one gas pumps are in museums.
