Posted on 05/18/2012 5:15:42 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
BANJIEHE, China -- 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.
An hour from downtown Beijing, the dusty village of Banjiehe looks an unlikely place to produce scientific innovation. Its rows of brick, utilitarian houses are surrounded by cornfields and fruit trees.
But in a small tractor workshop, 55-year-old farmer Tang Zhenping has invented the prototype of a car that he believes could revolutionize China's auto industry.
Tang's model -- built in just three months for around US$1,600 -- is electric
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Wouldn't it make more sense to streamline the nose of the car and reduce the air friction instead of trying to recapture the energy through a “turbine” that looks surprisingly like an old three speed fan?
The fan only helps at speeds above 40mph so for stop and go commuting it is worthless.
I think this is simply “a very cheap form of Nissan Leaf”
Basically, you have a lightweight battery powered car. Only instead of regenerative braking via electric motor/generator, you have regenerative braking via a cheap windmill.
What is probably in the nose is a copper wire cage housing over magnetic fan blades. First what would normally be wind resistance blowing thru a radiator is now harnessed into extending the battery charge and furthermore when you want to slow down, you charge the battery by increasing the load on the fan blades.
It is design being proposed for back yard wind generators in the US which is basically magnetized fan blades housed inside a copper wire cage.
Is that the car?
I like it. If one lives somewhere windy without snow, that in fact, would be a feasible way to get from point A, to point B, even if gas were $100 / gallon.
I would think the wind resistance to operate the turbine would offset any energy gained from its operation.
Give this guy a break! Don’t let laws of physics ruin this Chinaman’s dream. This could change the world.
Haha now I see, the blue “wind powered” car is the one in the article. The car in post 12, should be in the article. At least the car in post 12, actually works by means of wind power.
What a scam the article is!
It’s a “perpetual motion machine”. The car moving, powers the motor by the wind blowing the fan on the front???
For crying out loud. How dumb are journalists?
—Or he’s been to Cuba....—
Hahaha! I saw the Buena Vista Social Club video by Ry Cooder and there was a lot of documentary footage of Cuba. It was hilarious. Car wise, it was like they went back to around 1962. It was really cool, actually.
Oh, but the theocracy of nothing will not tolerate that!
Everything sprang out of nothing. Life then sprang out of the non-existent also. So getting more energy out than you put in is a fact to them.
Ya gotta admit the Atheocratists have a lot of faith in nothing.
I remember back when the Obozo people were just getting started in the early days of 2009. There was a meeting of some of the Obozo people and the representatives of the energy sector industry. The topic was some renewable green energy plan and one of the representatives of the energy sector said that the administration’s plan goes against the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Obozo head honco replied, “Who passed THAT law? We’ll get it repealed.”...........
It isn’t a “perpetual motion” vehicle. It is designed to recover some of the energy otherwise lost to friction when moving through the air. What that amounts to is hard to say. Maybe 5%?
Every fluidics or aerodynamics engineer knows that spinning a fan blade or prop blade consumes energy.
Even if it is free wheeling it creates drag which means it takes more power to move the vehicle forward.
A fan blade connected to a generator as in this case will consume more power than it generates.
It might provide a small benefit if you only use the vehicle in an area where all of the roads are downhill.
This idiotic device is engaged over 40mph at times when the driver's desire is to go forward.
What is then happening is the motor has to run a bit harder to not only push the car but turn the fan blades.
So you end up taking extra energy out of the battery running it through a couple of lossy conversions and putting a fraction of it back into the battery.
This is embarrassing, this is basic conservation of energy, physics 101. Please!
—This is embarrassing, this is basic conservation of energy, physics 101. Please!—
Precisely. I don’t come down hard so fast on these stories normally, but sometimes it is just necessary.
Sorry, no! It is designed to ADD more friction to the system and to recover a bit of what it ADDED to begin with.
(Warning! graphic pic!)
We live in an over regulated and bureaucratized system that cannot manage undirected inovation.
This is just the kind of thing that was prevelent in my great grandfather’s generation. A lot didnt work well but some things became more and more refined and become products.
We live in an overregulated and beurcratized system that cannot manage undirected inovation.
You are correct that we are over-regulated and every inventor is encumbered by regulation and paperwork, but this is NOT an example of that.
That turbine up front is a violation of the laws of physics and no amount of refinement will ever let him get past that.
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