For a contrarian like me, reading Ritchie is good for my mental sanity – but bad for my intellectual integrity. It fuels my priors that a lot of people, even experts, delude themselves into thinking they know things they actually don’t. Fantastic scientific results, either the kind blasted across headlines or those which gradually make it into public awareness, are often so poorly made that the results don’t hold up; they don’t capture anything real about the world. The book is a wake-up call for a scientific establishment often too blinded by its own erudite proclamations
My view, opinion, understanding of science is perhaps strange, because I think the scientific method should apply to science, especially claims made by experts
Putting a gas powered generator in a car, that runs the electric motor. Then adding some batteries and regenerative braking, using the electric motor, makes a car cheaper, easier to maintain, and gets fantastic gas mileage
It seems like a no brainer
Yet nobody but some kids in West Virginia has ever done it
robinson wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:32 am
Putting a gas powered generator in a car, that runs the electric motor. Then adding some batteries and regenerative braking, using the electric motor, makes a car cheaper, easier to maintain, and gets fantastic gas mileage
It seems like a no brainer
Yet nobody but some kids in West Virginia has ever done it
How big and powerful would the generator have to be in order to get up to decent speeds, and what kind of mpg would we be talking about?
robinson wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:32 am
Putting a gas powered generator in a car, that runs the electric motor. Then adding some batteries and regenerative braking, using the electric motor, makes a car cheaper, easier to maintain, and gets fantastic gas mileage
It seems like a no brainer
Yet nobody but some kids in West Virginia has ever done it
Tommy Palven wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:11 am
How big and powerful would the generator have to be in order to get up to decent speeds, and what kind of mpg would we be talking about?
Any links to this?
I was kidding about only kids in West Virginia doing this.
Even my hybrid is almost like that, but from an engineering/money POV it's cheaper to also have the gas motor drive the car. Instead of just the electric motor. Like a Prius.
I can't link to it, because it's not online, but back in 74 or 75 this guy used an APU to do it. The APU only ran the electric motors (he put a small one on each wheel. He used an old Buick frame, but it still went like a bat out of hell, and got over 1000 mpg.
Ford bought it, brought him to the Ford headquarters, talked about what a great idea it was, then buried it and never did another thing with it. And of course he couldn't do anything with it then either.
Real smart guy. That wasn't even his best invention.
robinson wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:32 am
Putting a gas powered generator in a car, that runs the electric motor. Then adding some batteries and regenerative braking, using the electric motor, makes a car cheaper, easier to maintain, and gets fantastic gas mileage
It seems like a no brainer
Yet nobody but some kids in West Virginia has ever done it
You just described a Prius.
Almost. The ICE in a prius (and other hybrids) also drives the wheels. You slipped in while I was composing previous post.
What the kids in West Virginia did was cobble an electric forklift motor onto an old car, filled the car up with deep cycle marine batteries, and made their own all electric car. This was like 30 years ago. Ran fast as hell, and they just charged the batteries instead of having to buy gas,