someone Build one of these 150 mpg hybrids!
 

anyone see the you tube video of the governor of Washington state riding around in a 150mpg suv?, apparently they used some capacitor to store the the energy used for quick bursts of power instead of relying on the batteries for this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujp1f4vXJ5U

yes this video is a 20 months old

this is also doable, plugin in hybrids... the lower vid shows a 100mpg prius with this, the top vid is an auto show filled with these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879VC...eature=channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGWC7LQyrs8

must be one big *** capacitor....

A big enough capacitor (would have to be pretty dang big) charged using regen braking could give a boost to mileage...wonder how many farads?

Years ago, my dad got his hands on a 12v mainframe computer power supply. Had about 50 amp capacity (I used it to start the car a couple times...) and had about a farad of filtering. I could run a two meter ham transceiver (receive only, power consumption would be similar to an inexpensive CB radio) about 10 minutes on just the capacitors alone.

I wonder if u could use capacitors on an alternator to reduce load due to electrical devices in a non hybrid.. headlights rob you of 2hp, so I could see some potential in it, unfortunately now that I just came up with an ingenious idea, I have no means of impelenting it(not willing to destroy my cars electrical system acidentally), so I suppose its just best off thrown into the wind..

but what if I could throw some capacitor right into the power line seems like they would already be using this , but maybe not, knowing how the auto industry is, I would assume probably not..

anyone care to share any history of this that they may know of hahaha or is this a ridiculous idea?

heres an 80 farad capacitor for 200$ rockford is a good brand
https://www.shop.com/farad+capacitor+...305717289&k=24 I wonder if I could run my battery through this and net some results

2 horsepower is 1500 watts. 9007 headlight bulbs are 55 watts each, so 110 watts. Are you saying there's 1400% loss between the alternator and the bulbs?

Arithmetically, I'd guess it's about .2 horsepower.

ok under that mathematics are you accounting for alternator load applied to the serpentine belt which robs the engine of power

blower motors are pretty powerful too

What he said. If you are using HID lights (35WX2), it's about .093 horsepower.

One Horsepower = 746 watts.

Heater Blower, worst case 20 amps X 12 volts = 240 watts = .32 horsepower

I don't think you would gain anything by putting a big capacitor in parallel with the battery...you'd still have to charge it (the capacitor).

IIRC, the point behind the big caps is to give a little power reserve for some of these guys with the big amps and big subwoofers...you know, the guys you can hear 1/4 mile away. It is, I think, supposed to keep the amp from going into distortion on those bass peaks. Of course, half the cars that have those amps rattle so much on the peaks, it probably doesn't matter!

There was about 40% waste in my calculations, but even if it's a lot more I can't beleive it's 1400%.

During those bass peaks, the amp pulls a LOT of power. If the battery and alternator can't keep up with those spikes fast enough, a capacitor is supposed to help.

Caps in a hybrid are allowed to have their voltage go up and down a LOT as they absorb regen energy and then give it up during acceleration. Those voltage swings would not work on your 12 volt electrical system. The big power amps draw 2000 watts at times on the 12 - 14 volt power line that translates to 166 amps surges so the BIG farad(s) size caps provide that surge to make up for the loses that many amps put on the wires going from the battery to the amp and also for the batteries inability to provide rapid load response to the amp draw. The Ultra caps work great for quick stops and starts but don't really handle long hill energy levels which can really charge up a battery in even a Prius fully so Cap are not the ultimate solution.

i read headlights=2hp somewhere maybe it was wrong
but what your basically saying is theres a possibility that it could be .3 hp

set your scangauge to GPH or HP (if you have it set up for that) and let your car idle. cut the lights on and then off to see what the difference is. that will tell the tale.

if you don't want to waste gas to do this, wait until you are at a stop light. this is also good because you will be at operating temp and in closed loop. i did this and there was a very little difference. I think the HP gauge showed a few tenths difference. I did do this a while back and several have wondered about the accuracy of that X-gauge on the scangauge but it at least told me that there is some difference but not the huge difference that most have talked about. also, at idle, my car only produces 5-6 HP. please remember also that it is only running 600ish RPMs as well.

I think mine was .05gph difference with the lights on and off.

Caps are physically a simple device. It's just conductors with an insulator between them. I was looking into DIY Tesla coils a few years back and found some people used nested yogurt cups with aluminum foil in between as caps. Granted these were not being use with 12V, more like 800-10kV AC.

As to the benefits of a big cap on a car, I really don't see it improving anything, unless it was hooked up to some sort of specialized charging device and or controller.

A cap takes power, and then can give it back quickly (with loss, like any device). So your not saving energy, unless the power to charge it up would otherwise be waited.

All and all, i think, a cap would only make improvements on a electrical system which had large power spikes (ether in usage, or charging).
The only applications i can think of would be electric motors, and HHO devices that were on complex controllers.

I think the question is, do capacitors store and release energy more efficiently than batteries...

it depends how long you need to store it, and how the current will be drawn.

Oh, thought of an application! for people who turn off there cars in N. A cap for restarting would likely be quite useful.

What I'd like to see is a capacitor big enough to REPLACE the battery in either an electric or a hybrid car. Would have to be a pretty dang big capacitor...but it might get rid of the charging time problem...

The charging time problem is due to lack of adequate supply. Put the capacitor in the charging station.

Well... not entirely friend...

If you run an EV for 100 miles at once and try to recharge it, you will find that the batteries are going to be hot. Hot charging batteries results in cooking of the cells which leads to premature failure of them. Oddly though, few people commute 100+ miles daily. A standard 120VAC 15 amp wall outlet can recharge a 10Kw battery pack in 8 hours. Just in time to go home again from a long day at work.

Read about Noel Perrin's scientific work in Solo to find out more ok?:thumbup:

I happen to be one of those people who commute about 100 miles daily. One of my co-workers (who has a much shorter commute) has converted a VW bug to electric...but hasn't been able to get the boss to let him recharge his car...yet...he has a much shorter commute (<20 miles), and his batteries won't let him go to work and back home.

caps are a much simpler device than batters, which makes them more flexible in application. You can charge a big one in 2sec if you have the current source. And on the flip side of thing, if you sort out a cap it will discharge completely in a fraction of a second. On the scale of a car battery, that's big hole melted threw your hood.
I don't know how long a cap can hold a charge, I think, batteries have a large advantage on this. But there are many types of caps, and many types of batteries. It wouldn't be that hard to fabricate yourself a Lithium Ion car battery, which would raise the bar much higher for what you would need out of a cap for it to be a better chose.

I've heard, somewhere, that there are some people using caps for electric drag racing cars.

Yes, when capacitors blow, they can do so rather spectacularly...I was using an old tube type Sansui stereo my brother brought back after a tour in 'Nam. One day, I heard a loud 'pop' from the set...there was one of the filter caps, blown apart, foil expanded out everywhere!

It was a quick fix, of course, solder in a new cap and the set was good as new. But magnify that by the amount of current required in a car, and you might get an idea of what could happen if a cap failed.

A charged capacitor can hold a charge for quite a while...when working on old tube type radios and TV sets, the wise person always, after removing power, shorts all electrolytic capacitors. Most sets have a way of bleeding off the charge, but since the caps can hold a potentially fatal charge, one should never trust such bleeder devices.

A company called EEStor in Texas (has) is working on a capacitor that should be capable of powering a car for 250-300 miles and recharge as fast as you can pump the energy into it - will not wear out and be lighter and smaller than a Lithium battery with the same energy and theorically cheeper. Just have not seen it come out year . . .