The world has been waiting patiently for a solution to the perpetual motion machine problem. Leave it to the Chinese to solve it. Now, where the hell is my flying car Popular Science has been promising me for 50 years? I want mine to be electric. /sarc
From SkyNews –
Wind-Powered Car ‘Could Cut China’s Smog’
Holly Williams, China correspondent
A Chinese farmer has invented a wind-powered electric car that he says could save his country from the pollution caused by its rapidly growing car market.
…
But in a small tractor workshop, 55-year-old farmer Tang Zhenping has invented the prototype of a car that he believes could revolutionise China’s auto industry.
Mr Tang’s model – built in just three months for around £1,000 – is electric.
Its engine uses scrap parts from a motorcycle and electric scooter, while its steering wheel, upholstery and headlights all come from a Chinese-made Xiali hatchback.
But what makes the one-seater special is the turbine on its nose.
When the car reaches 40mph, the blades spring into action and begin generating pollution-free power.
“It works just like a windmill,” said Mr Tang, who claims the turbine gives his vehicle three times the battery life of other electric cars.
Full story here
h/t to Bishop Hill
UPDATE: This comment on the Facebook page was too funny not to share.
Rik Magers commented on wattsupwiththat’s post.
Rik wrote: “Not only does it defy the laws of physics by powering itself, but he picked up a chick in it! Hope this is the prototype for the new Chevy Volt.”
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Well, to be charitable, perhaps he plans to only travel downhill. 🙂
I’m sure the IPCC should be interested, because they have and endless supply of hot air!!!
;-))
Wouldn’t you need a sail to make it wind powered rather than a fan?
Never mind that the “turbine” is pathetic and violates basic physics laws hence cannot work.
He might as well paint flames on the sides of the car, and claim that this makes the car “supercharged” and make it go even faster.
What it does perfectly, and according to design, is making this guy famous and rich.
We are humans like children, believing in miracles, and getting upset if told that they don’t work, thus ignoring the voice of reason. I have seen it so many times….. Also, listening to the voice of reason betrays own ignorance, ergo avoided as much as possible.
What is annoying and scary is that such idiots can get into power, and vote, and have the audacity to believe in higher moral standing.
Thanks SKY NEWS. Should have waited for the 1st of April to announce this.
This is the day for perpetual motion ideas. .
Any chance that this is a prank by, say, students from Cal Tech??
They stole my idea, but I would put the blades on top of the car and have them on a poll like real wind turbines. To start my car you would wind up the blades with a rubber band like you used to do on old balsa wood toy airplanes. Once it got going the wind created from it moving forward would keep it going by turning the turbines. That should work, right?
Well not so fast, perpetual motion machines aside, at least he is recapturing some energy from the wind turbulence just like one would do with regenerative braking. It is primarily regenerative braking that makes current electric hybrids more fuel efficient than conventional engines. The person who figures out how to cut wind resistance on vehicles by either reducing drag OR recovering some of the energy lost in drag is going to be a very rich person. Hilarity aside, he just might be on to something, just not the right something. Put the turbine in the back in the low pressure pocket (this is why NASCAR drivers draft team mates vehicles) and see what kind of energy recapture you get…
Looks like the car is already a success. The creator is picking up chicks.
http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2012/May/Week3/16228753
LOL @ur momisugly rear mounted vertical stabilizer. It’s a bit scary how many people are actually buying into this vehicle in the comments section of the Sky News website.
Gail Combs says:
May 16, 2012 at 9:09 am
___________________________________
Forget the spaghetti tree, I want money trees or a flock of golden geese or both to add to my farm.
==================================================
Or a herd of those Unicorns that crap out gold bricks to pay for all silly “green investments”
How plucky of the inventor to risk his valuable prototype in China traffic!
If a truck ran over MY tiny hand-built electric car, I would be… well… crushed!
dscott says:
May 16, 2012 at 9:29 am
Well not so fast, perpetual motion machines aside, at least he is recapturing some energy from the wind turbulence just like one would do with regenerative braking.
————————————–
The wind ‘turbine’ also creates drag, which means that the car has to put out more power to overcome the additional drag created by the ‘turbine’. Regenerative braking doesn’t cost me anything in terms of power when I’m driving down the road.
DavidA says:
“No problems with this, he’s harnessing drag to spin a generator…”
No; he’s creating additional drag to spin a generator and the drag of a non-powered, unfeathered airscrew is the same as sticking a flat disc on the nose, face on to the slipstream. Since this fan is reverse pitched I expect the induced drag is worse.
Inspector gadget’s scooter motor also has to drag around the weight of a useless lump of iron and copper to reduce the range of his breifly powered dodgem car and help science proof eco-mentalists sleep better at night.
What’s next? shall we mount electric hairdriers in front of wind-turbines and harness the hot air to spin their generators on a still day?
dscott says:
May 16, 2012 at 9:29 am
Well not so fast, perpetual motion machines aside, at least he is recapturing some energy from the wind turbulence just like one would do with regenerative braking. It is primarily regenerative braking that makes current electric hybrids more fuel efficient than conventional engines. The person who figures out how to cut wind resistance on vehicles by either reducing drag OR recovering some of the energy lost in drag is going to be a very rich person. Hilarity aside, he just might be on to something, just not the right something. Put the turbine in the back in the low pressure pocket (this is why NASCAR drivers draft team mates vehicles) and see what kind of energy recapture you get——————-
You forgot the sarc tag.
Regenerative braking is using your need to stop or slow the car to an advantage by feeding electrical energy back into the system.
So as long as Tang Zhenping is wanting to stop his motorcycle and he engages his “turbo fan” while in that process, yes, I could see that adding to the system. But the drag the extra equipment adds during normal operation I think will do more harm than good.
sarc/off
@ur momisugly DickF:
Ram Air Turbines on aircraft use the Kinetic energy of an aircraft falling out of the sky to provide just enough electricity to power your emergency system bus. They use gravity, or the thrust of Jet Engines to spin those little blades. Even at 300+ knots they don’t create enough electricity to do much more than pop the ignitors on your motors or run a few guages, they don’t even power up your radios. If a generator with blades turning at 20,000+ rpm on the side of a Jet aircraft travelling at 300 knots can only pop some sparkplugs or get your airspeed indications up and running, that is actually proof that this contraption travelling at 40 mph cannot produce enough electricity to provide a positive effect on it’s electrical system.
DickF says:
May 16, 2012 at 8:39 am
“Dave, it’s been done. Many modern aircraft are equipped with a Ram Air Turbine (“RAT”). The RAT is normally retracted in flight, but can be extended to produce emergency electrical power in the event of multiple generator or engine failures.”
But the power produced by the RAT, is not additional to the power generated by the engines, is it? Extra power must be generated by the engines to maintain the same flight profile as would be the necessary without the RAT. Yet this article appears to be claiming that the fan is adding power to that which the engine generates. Thus, the car is claiming to be a perpetual motion machine.
“The wind ‘turbine’ also creates drag, which means that the car has to put out more power to overcome the additional drag created by the ‘turbine’. Regenerative braking doesn’t cost me anything in terms of power when I’m driving down the road.”
But the drag is already there. Mounted in-line it would produce just as much drag as a flat face to the wind. Its not going to propel the car forever, but it is recovering some lost energy, much like regenerative braking.
Similar deal with HOH generators for IC engines. Sure, we’re taking some energy from the engine in order to produce HOH gas, which then gets combusted with the gasoline so we use less gasoline. There is a demonstrable net gain in fuel efficiency.
Or the craziest idea (and the one I like the most) is the guy who hooked up a 5th stroke to a 4 stroke engine, where he injects H2O onto the cylinder, producing a steam power stroke. Brilliant, if not impractical in the long term.
This car definitely needs some flames airbrushed on the doors which should increase its speed and therefore the energy for the turbine by at least 20%.
Unfortunately this technology is already covered by several US patents. Since the roads aren’t full of these super-efficient vehicles I can only assume that the patents have been bought by big oil to prevent their deployment.
The Dutch already have a wind powered car.
As aviators know, a rotating prop generates more form drag than a non rotating one. Thus, the fan is adding extra drag and forcing the engine to work harder to maintain the same speed. This extra drag creates the spin which powers the generator. Unless the conversion is 100% efficient, then more energy is used up than if the device wasn’t present to begin with.
This is not the same as recovering power from active braking systems. In this case, all the kinetic energy of the car is used up by braking and would be lost as heat, It can, however, be recovered by linking to a generator system. No matter how inefficient the mechanism, even returning a small amount of energy, is better than loosing the lot to heat. This fan-car, as far as I can make out, must cost more energy than it generates.
I don’t know what the big deal is. As any Guardian reader will tell you, these cars have been operating successfully on the island paradise of San Serriffe for years. The most popular model is the Winding mark II. The islanders are very keen to curb CO2 because they know more about coastal erosion than any other nation in the World. I’m expecting a climate change conference to be scheduled there to highlight the plight of those unwillingly nomadic people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Serriffe
From back when the Guardian was a good paper with a sense of humour and a relaxed attitude to spelling.
dscott says:
“…Put the turbine in the back in the low pressure pocket (this is why NASCAR drivers draft team mates vehicles) and see what kind of energy recapture you get…”
In the low pressure slipsteam behind the car, the fan will be inefficient owing to the relative lack of air impinging on the blades and the turbulent flow (ever wondered how mud and road grime can fly forwards in order to completely mud coat the back of hatchbacks and buses in winter?).
Alternatively consider how an outboard motor’s revs flare when the propellor cavitates in another boat’s prop wash while speed simultaneous drops sharply.
Racing cars are able to benefit from a tow when closely following another car because the leading car does the hard work of shoving the ambient air out of the way, meaning the following car has less drag to overcome.
The best way to ‘use’ the aerodynamics of a car to benefit efficiency are small things, like putting radiators in areas of relatively high pressure to increase the mass-flow of cooling air through the core which should improve the cooling efficiency (and maybe allow smaller, lighter radiators).Which has pretty much already been thought of since radiators are usually in the front…
In all fairness, all he’s claiming is that the system extends battery life, not that it runs forever.
That said, only one problem with plan – it STUPID! It stupidest plan I ever hear!
REPLY: Regenerative braking is the solution for energy recovery on the fly, already incorporated into many electric vehicles. This is just reinventing the fan, er wheel. I’m surprised that a journalist would bother with this story in the serious way she did. – Anthony
By jove I’ve got it!
we need some cats, some toast and some jam.
Everyone knows that a cat always lands on it’s feet, and everyone knows that if you drop toast after you spread jam on it it will fall jammy side down; so if we fasten the toast onto a cat’s back, jam side up, then we have a carbon neutral anti-gravity device.
Even low friction tyres can’t extend a dodgem car’s range like zero friction levitation!
Now to figure out how to use regurgitated fur-balls for propulsion…
Stand aside chaps, I’m away off to the patent office and then down to the ministry of Gullible Warming and Silly Walks for my squillion dollar research grant!