Rouute: ROAD-BASED ENERGY

[PlainName]

This Rouute thing is obviously a dead duck but I wonder if we're looking at it wrong? ISTM that we see a series of these bump generators over which cars (and trucks, etc) pass at normal speeds as if they're not there. See, for instance, the video of the car trundling along the highway.

The thing is, there is no such thing as "as if they are not there". If they take any energy at all from the moving vehicle, they will have a braking effect. It is just a matter of how much. If you only take a few watts, the vehicles will hardly notice it, but at the same time a few watts is not very useful. If you try to take kilowatts the vehicles will definitely notice it, and their fuel consumption will increase accordingly.

Perhaps you could read a bit further than the first two sentences, and then you'll see that 'obviously being there' is exactly the feature to use.

[Circlotron]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing. Maybe like they do it on aircraft carriers, but that sounds more like an article from a 1930s Popular Mechanics magazine.

[EEVblog]

If you only take a few watts, the vehicles will hardly notice it, but at the same time a few watts is not very useful. If you try to take kilowatts the vehicles will definitely notice it, and their fuel consumption will increase accordingly.

As mentioned in my video, their own 300Wh figure is the equivalent energy to completely stopping a 3 ton car from 94km/h to zero.

[SiliconWizard]

If you only take a few watts, the vehicles will hardly notice it, but at the same time a few watts is not very useful. If you try to take kilowatts the vehicles will definitely notice it, and their fuel consumption will increase accordingly.

As mentioned in my video, their own 300Wh figure is the equivalent energy to completely stopping a 3 ton car from 94km/h to zero.

Yes.
And anyway, however small what you take from vehicles is, it's still taken. So it's just a tax, and a pretty expensive and ineffective way of taxing people. Completely dumb.

[pcprogrammer]

Then the people who came up with the name "generator" should have had more wits about it and should have named it "converter". 

Connect a "converter" to a steam turbine and it converts the rotational energy into electrical energy.

Converter is a valid name in some circumstances, for example a rotary converter can convert DC to AC, or convert 50 Hz to 60 Hz.

But "generator" is understood in engineering to generate an output of a new kind that is different from the kind of input. For example, a heat generator can generate heat, and an electrical generator can generate electricity. Or an oxygen generator can make oxygen.

Sure, but that is the whole point. If it was originally named "converter" that would have been understood in engineering to turn some form of energy into some other form of energy.

The same goes for any other word in the dictionary. If another word was made up for something we would be using that other word.

[pcprogrammer]

 

Imagine this. It is a cloudy windless day and there is an energy crisis on which governments decide to prohibit driving on Sundays. Then how is this system going to help us. 

And don't say this car less Sunday thing won't happen, because it already did several times in the Netherlands due to fear of running out of fossil fuels and other reasons. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autovrije_dag

In Brussels they had it last year. https://www.brussel.be/autoloze-zondag

You got to love the bullshit people come up with.

 

[.RC.]

It needs a flywheel somewhere.

Every perpetual motion machine has a flywheel.

But seriously, how stupid would you really have to be to even think this would somehow obtain energy from somewhere other then sapping it from the vehicle.

[tszaboo]

There is one way I see acceptable to extract energy from cars for useful work, it's this:

[nctnico]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing.

That already exists. It is called regenerative braking. Standard on every electric and hybrid car.

[CatalinaWOW]

I wonder if anyone has thought of the historical benefits of this idea.  Restoring the feeling of driving on brick or cobblestone pavements.

[SiliconWizard]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing.

That already exists. It is called regenerative braking. Standard on every electric and hybrid car.

Yes, as already mentioned. And this is far more efficient than trying to harvest the equivalent outside of the vehicle. Almost worth facepalming, although we must be nice.

[nctnico]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing.

That already exists. It is called regenerative braking. Standard on every electric and hybrid car.

Yes, as already mentioned. And this is far more efficient than trying to harvest the equivalent outside of the vehicle. Almost worth facepalming, although we must be nice.

If you want, you can have my blessing to facepalm all you want on this one 

[Circlotron]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing.

That already exists. It is called regenerative braking. Standard on every electric and hybrid car.

I know that. I mean recovering the kinetic energy from conventional ICE powered cars.

[JustMeHere]

What would be really cool is if all of you EV guys could plug in and power the grid directly with your car.   Save the world with your car!

[JustMeHere]

What might be useful, although maybe impractical, is to have some kind of energy absorbing mechanism on a road surface just upstream of traffic lights that rise slightly above the surface every time the lights go red and the traffic is meant to stop. To recover the energy of a moving line of traffic and bring it to a complete stop would be amazing.

That already exists. It is called regenerative braking. Standard on every electric and hybrid car.

I know that. I mean recovering the kinetic energy from conventional ICE powered cars.

They got that too.  It's done with flywheels (considered a hybrid by some.)  However, it's better done in a battery hybrid.

[tszaboo]

What would be really cool is if all of you EV guys could plug in and power the grid directly with your car.   Save the world with your car!

It exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

There were limited studies about it.
I think it will be more important to have distributed networks. You drive to work, plug in your car to a charger there. Your solar panel at home makes electricity, and that's what you use at work for charging. Instead of paying for expensive electricity, and get laughable feed-in fees, you only pay for transport costs.

[SiliconWizard]

How many of you think that a majority of people will still be driving individual vehicles at all as we still do now, to begin with, in one, two or three decades?

[pcprogrammer]

How many of you think that a majority of people will still be driving individual vehicles at all as we still do now, to begin with, in one, two or three decades?

Probably lots of people, unless we are all forced to live in cities with very good public transport. Would probably hang myself if that ever happens. Did not move to the country side for nothing.

Has anyone looked into harvesting energy from the shock absorbers. They go up and down a lot when driving on rough roads. Might get some Watts out of that as it is lost energy otherwise.

Double it up with the road bump system and you get 200% 

[Xena E]

Has anyone looked into harvesting energy from the shock absorbers. They go up and down a lot when driving on rough roads. Might get some Watts out of that as it is lost energy otherwise.

Yes, it is being investigated, manufacturing electro magnetic mechanical dampers is perfectly valid, and not such a great step away is the direct harvesting of electrical energy from them.

Have you ever dropped a magnet down a non ferrous metal tube and noted the restriction on the speed of fall? That's the principle.

How much can it generate? If you can say what the extra fuel cost is between driving on a rough road against a smooth one you have your answer:

Basically bugger all, but perhaps probably worthwhile in an EV: it also allows for adaptive ride suspension.

Perhaps we need to get the real Morgan F, to promote it

[SiliconWizard]

Perhaps we need to cut the bullshit, but this is a far more challenging project.

[EEVblog]

How many of you think that a majority of people will still be driving individual vehicles at all as we still do now, to begin with, in one, two or three decades?

How will society change to enable that to happen?
The answer is, it won't change, much.

[PlainName]

How many of you think that a majority of people will still be driving individual vehicles at all as we still do now, to begin with, in one, two or three decades?

How will society change to enable that to happen?
The answer is, it won't change, much.

In towns and cities they can make it too tedious to have personal transport, partly with a stick (charging for access, LTNs, 10mph speed limits, etc) and partly with a carrot (much better public transport). Outside cities that won't wash because there is no alternative if you want to step outside your door, but the question was 'most' and I think most people do indeed reside in cities and towns.

Any major conurbation already has loads of cyclists (despite adverse weather) and I don't really see why that wouldn't be the route for those that want personalised in-city transport. It does work - see Asian cities where cyclists basically carpet the place - and I reckon it's just a matter of making that seem more attractive than the hassle of owning a car.

[IanB]

In towns and cities they can make it too tedious to have personal transport, partly with a stick (charging for access, LTNs, 10mph speed limits, etc) and partly with a carrot (much better public transport). Outside cities that won't wash because there is no alternative if you want to step outside your door, but the question was 'most' and I think most people do indeed reside in cities and towns.

Any major conurbation already has loads of cyclists (despite adverse weather) and I don't really see why that wouldn't be the route for those that want personalised in-city transport. It does work - see Asian cities where cyclists basically carpet the place - and I reckon it's just a matter of making that seem more attractive than the hassle of owning a car.

If you take London, for example, then a car is a liability and public transport gets you almost anywhere very efficiently. The trouble comes when on a few days a month you need a car to go outside the city, and then it should be really easy to rent a car as required. For example, it is really easy to rent an electric bike just by putting a credit card in a slot. Maybe in future, you could pick up an electric car from a charging point, drive it somewhere, and drop it off at another charging point.

[PlainName]

Yep, London should be a good example. But...

They've certainly dissuaded me from visiting, but once a year we go in for a dinner at some posh restaurant, usually around the Picadilly Circus area. You'd think public transport would be the right choice, but in fact is is cheaper to drive in and pay the extortionate NCP parking fees than it is to catch the train and then local transport to get to the place. And that's for one person, but since there would be a pair of us it's even cheaper to ignore public transport! And then, of course, we can go and leave at whatever time we fancy rather than whatever time the train will be cancelled.

If they really want to get rid of cars they need to make the alternatives attractive rather than a pita, and then it would probably happen.

[IanB]

When you say "catch the train and then local transport", I assume you are starting somewhere outside of London and then catching the train into London first? That can indeed be expensive, since national rail fares can be somewhat pricey. But if you were starting out inside the contactless fare zone, then the travel would be relatively inexpensive.

I remember one time going into London from the outer suburbs, and I decided to drive instead of taking the train. Boy, did I regret that! I spent hours in traffic jams fighting with everyone else who had the same idea of driving into London. The train would have been such a better option.

You mentioned the NCP parking fees, but did you also mention the charge for driving inside the congestion zone?