Featured Let Your Tires Charge Your Car

will that reduce mpg's?

 

Yes, I saw that somewhere a couple of years ago - was it Popular Science - but it was a more mainstream brand (Goodyear/Dunlop?)

I did wonder - does it break the law - of conservation of energy?

 

Of course it does. But it is probably gathering a tiny bit of energy that is otherwise lost in the noise.

from the article: So far, the small devices that Sumitomo attaches to the inside of the tire's tread recaptures only a small amount of energy, enough to keep the tire-pressure-monitor sensors charged, for example

Mike

 

lifetime tpms is a good thing

 

Only if it obeys the law of conservation of energy.

Perpetual Motion machines have a special exemption from this law.

 

If we evolved this new technology with future advancements of superconducters and then added the latest super capacitor tech we could literally have an electric motor powered by the tire to up to near 98% of what the motor needs and then super capacitors could store regenerative breaking energy to cover the other 2%. It'd be like driving 4 flywheels that almost never stop spinning!

 

Congratulations. When accounting the fact that vehicles also lose a lot of energy to air drag, you'll effectively have created a perpetual motion machine. That will be a big enough advancement to earn the Nobel Prize in Physics, for overturning the conventional physics that we are using now and going to something beyond.

Really. Seriously.

We are not holding our breath.

 

So have Elon drill tunnels everywhere and make them into a vacuum. No air = no drag = great mpg and mpge. Of course, now the car will need to supply oxygen to the occupants, so that would lower the mpg a bit...

 

Better yet, no TPMS at all.

 

I’ll take a good indirect TPMS any day. No battery, no sensor. nothin. Just a computer watching the wheel speed sensor data and running faster live stats than a vegas sports book. You get all of the practical value with none of the implementation penalty.

 

I'm with you on this. My 2011 VW Jetta had ABS-based TPMS. About zero cost since it used existing sensors, and nothing added to the wheels. Worked the same on the summer tires or winter tires.

 

Well, it's not perpetual motion; it's similar to generating energy from ocean waves, or a wrist watch that perpetually charges from your wrist motion.

 

{Note: I mentally inverted Bisco's response. Brain fart. Yes, this thing can only reduce MPG, not boost it.}

Both of those produce some drag on the things they are harvesting from. Ocean waves are attenuated a bit (likely a good thing for beachfront property owners behind it). A self-winding watch is heavier than one without the feature, and the swinging pendulum puts a bit of drag on the wrist. No problem when the power draw is small or even negligible, and provides a benefit of solving a power delivery problem to some small accessory. TPMS is a perfect example.

But to get a significant energy harvest from this tire device, it must necessarily provide greater rolling resistance. For a car, which requires significant power / energy, this will be quite significant compared to a non-harvesting LRR tire. It won't boost overall MPG.

 

Ok, so here's the deal: line the whole tire with these things (probably piezoelectric) and drive them from an electrical source. The tires become the 'motor'.

Bob Wilson

 

What electrical source would drive these?

 

Same source that drives today's electric cars.