Cars, cars and electric cars

  • Thread starter Thread starter joinerjohn1
  • Start date Start date
Active turbines provide thrust,jet engines.?

Fuel is spent to produce energy.

Passive turbines create drag. The
Vacumn at the outlet is a negative force.

'Sucking the vehicle backwards.

I'm currently sucking back a rather nice Merlot.
The CoFD is out of this world
 
All such things work, as they should do. But in this situation the 'gain' is more or less pointless. The car electrics will generate all the power and more that any strap on device can muster. Really all that such a thing can do is create a novelty interest, and assist the salesman in creating alluring and misleading waffle.
 
Strip the car right back to a chassis and wheels. Power it with an electric motor directly driving the wheels. Next to no aerodynamic drag, if you place the batteries and you in the chassis frame and add some form of splitter at the front. Basically a plank rolling along the road.
Now put a wind turbine on it to charge the batteries.
You'll find that as you go, the batteries discharge.
Not due to aerodynamic drag of the main vehicle but due to more effort being required to move the car forward than can be regained from the turbine. Motors and turbines are inefficient. You have an inefficient drive source giving it's power to an inefficient method of delivering the power (tyres on tarmac) and then you're using an inefficient tool (which also introduces two forms of drag) to harness the energy of the airflow as you move. And let's not forget that all of this has weight. The turbine adds weight.

You are going to lose charge as you go and it's unavoidable with this sort of tech.

So even if the whole car was a hole....HA's idea doesn't work. And on reflection I'm not even sure that my downhill idea would yield a gain because you're having to carry that weight of the turbine in the flats and up hills and provide the power to move that extra weight....I'm no longer sure it would even extend the range.
 
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