Ingeneer - an idea to turn Leaf into a perpetum mobile

Or close to it, of course.

Now if anyone made this kit specifically fitting the Leaf, I'd go for that.
I've been thinking about this for quite a while but figured it was not possible. Otherwise, Nissan would have thought of it too, right?

Basically, these are small magnets and coils inside the wheels making juice as the wheel moves, and feeding it into the traction battery. Apparently, someone other than Nissan thought of it too and actually made this thing. Needless to say, it could revolutionize our range even with the stinky 24 kW battery.

Read all about it...

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big-abc-news/kit-turns-car-hybrid-170717691.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This kit is to turn an ICE vehicle into a hybrid, not to turn an EV into a perpetual motion machine.

I know that. It's a contraption that makes electricity. I guess they haven't thought of the fact BEVs could benefit from extra juice on the go as well.

It feeds into an extraneous Li battery on board. So, why couldn't it feed into an existing one?

Brilliant...Charge while you drive! If you pick a real big generator, you could get by without the traction battery
at all! Just give the car a little push and off it goes.... :lol: :roll:

Just think of all the perpetual motion you could get with a 36 kWH pack!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJKRpqnbdFg[/youtube]

Cmon guys, no reason to be rude, simply explain.


When driving, the leaf converts electricity to kinetic energy. The law of conservation of mass and energy dictates that energy is never created, simply converted - and no conversion is perfect. Therefore, a portion, not all, of the electricity is converted to kinetic energy.

The device you listed converts a portion of a vehicle's kinetic energy into electricity. Again, see above about conversion efficiency.

So if you used this device on a bev, you'd be taking away part of the kinetic energy your car just worked so hard to convert from electricity, and converting it back to electricity. During each of those conversions, there would be some loss.

In the case of an EV, the only time you'd ever *want* kinetic energy converted to electricity is when you're trying to reduce velocity (braking) - and the Leaf has a very efficient and powerful regenerative brake system built in, so I don't believe there would be anything to gain even in that situation.

I understand that for an ICE it makes a lot of sense to convert some of the Kinetic energy into electrons in a battery, especially when braking. But I still don't understand how this kit will help use those stored energy in the battery back into kinetic energy, unless you have all the complicated drive train and electric motors and such that a Prius has ?

mkjayakumar said:

I understand that for an ICE it makes a lot of sense to convert some of the Kinetic energy into electrons in a battery, especially when braking. But I still don't understand how this kit will help use those stored energy in the battery back into kinetic energy, unless you have all the complicated drive train and electric motors and such that a Prius has ?

Click to expand...

The generators you attached to the rear wheels (of a presumably front-wheel-drive vehicle) also serve as motors. An interface with the CAN bus reads the brake and throttle positions and stores/doles out energy accordingly.
=Smidge=

Kids eat free, all others pay CASH!

I've said it before and I'll say it again,
http://youtu.be/Xy0UBpagsu8

ILETRIC said:

I know that. It's a contraption that makes electricity. I guess they haven't thought of the fact BEVs could benefit from extra juice on the go as well.

It feeds into an extraneous Li battery on board. So, why couldn't it feed into an existing one?

Click to expand...

Let me share with you that the LEAF can do this right now without any additional hardware. Your LEAF can produce at least 35kw of additional power right now to the pack. This kit is of no use to the LEAF in any way other than adding unsprung weight.

They don't even mention a regen capability anyway. The facts are that the LEAF already has and does EVERYTHING this kit could provide. Installing one would just be a very roundabout way of adding battery capacity...You'd be better off with an Enginer kit that only adds battery rather than messing with adding wheel motors.

With the perpetual motion discussion in this thread pushed aside, it's otherwise kind of a cool kit.