The Hybrid Hybrid | Green Energy News

February 20, 2005 – Vol.9 No.48

THE HYBRID HYBRID.

It may come as come as a complete surprise. It may come out of the blue without warning. Someday some person or some company may come up with a new technology - or a rethinking of existing technologies - that will result in a device that will easily, cheaply, seamlessly, and without much investment in infrastructure, replace the conventional drive train in our cars and trucks with a highly efficient, very low emission alternative.

And be warned. To the dismay of hydrogen and fuel cell enthusiasts, it may not involve either.

The question is, is the new technology announced by flywheel manufacturer AFS Trinity it?

AFS Trinity calls its invention Extreme Hybrid (tm). They say it could deliver the equivalent of 250 miles per gallon of gasoline for a car or 200 miles per gallon for light truck. It’s a plug-in-to-the-grid hybrid technology that would incorporate a battery pack, a flywheel, an electric drive motor and an internal combustion engine.

In daily use an Extreme Hybrid would be connected to the grid each night via a wireless inductive coupler to keep the vehicle’s battery pack fully charged. The battery would hold enough energy for 40-50 miles. For longer trips the internal combustion engine would kick in to generate electricity and the vehicle would get about 50 miles per gallon. The combination of battery power alone and gas/electric power would result in the 200-plus miles per gallon fuel economy.

The difference between this technology and now-typical gasoline/electric hybrid technology is in the recapturing of spent energy. In a typical hybrid the vehicle’s battery recharges slightly as the vehicle slows or brakes. (Recharging a battery is a slow process that takes hours, not the seconds it takes to slow from 65 miles per hour to a full stop.)

With an Extreme Hybrid a flywheel (or perhaps a bank of ultracapacitors) would recapture nearly all of the energy the vehicle consumed when it accelerated to a certain speed. If nearly all the energy needed to bring a car to certain speed can be recaptured then, net energy consumption is dramatically improved. High fuel economy is the result.

Trinity says its technology would include five subsystems: 1) Energy storage in advanced lithium batteries, 2) power storage in an advanced flywheel; 3) advanced power-conversion and electronics; 4) a high efficiency steady state engine; 5) an electric power train.

This year the company says a bus hybrid/hybrid technology will be deployed and the development of a passenger car drive train will begin. A prototype of the car drive train will be ready in two years. Licensing the technology to car makers could begin in three. The company has spent more than $45 million over the past 10 years to develop advanced flywheel technology.

The major problems with this technology? Price and complexity. There’s one more expensive component than a typical already-expensive hybrid - the flywheel. Still fuel cells are far from commercialization, in part because their high price and complexity. But extremely good fuel economy even if it involved an occasional, but not always necessary, grid plug in, could add to this combination of technologies’ appeal. Visit Trinity at http://www.afstrinity.com/