All of this involves at some point electricity, which is quite controllable by switches and rheostats and the like ... machines like this would need brains, little chips that know what to do in each situation ... i bet that sensors and controlling devices are at least as important as the actual basic energy conversion processes ... take regenerative braking, which is a great idea but hard to do ... something has to sense how hard you're pushing the brake pedal, then apply that exactly to draw on the brake motor .... but then come to think of it, in the 60s we had a Le Tourneau rough-terrain logging truck that would do that, the thing was driven in each of the four wheels by a massive electric motor which became the brake when the current was reversed ... ?? .. as i recall ... it only had two pedals, go-faster and brake, a steering wheel, a little reverse lever, and a throttle lever for the V-12 Jimmy ... any kid tall enough to see through the windshield could drive it, and you could chase mountain goats with the thing.
But many energy conversion situations, like for instance storing wind- or solar-generated electricity, take some smart parts to do it efficiently.
There is a thread for that ttc thing - Subject 36834
My interest was piqued by an amusing faq page on the Xogen website ... if there are scientists involved with the project, they must have been busy and asked the janitor's fourteen-year-old to write the faq page -g- |
