This is great news for the green car crowd. Ford has developed a hydraulic hybrid F150 truck that gets 60 mpg city. This technology can be used in many applictions such as pickup trucks, large suvs, UPS delivery trucks, and even garbage trucks. Projected launch date is August 2008. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/02/60_mpg_ford_f15.php
It's one thing to "claim it", but I believe it when it's tested by an independant lab - I'm not exactly holding my breath over this one... "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is..." Dave
Nope. Don't believe it. If they can develop a hydraulic storage system that's more efficient than batteries, they'd get some significant improvement over gas-electric hybrids. But that's too high a figure for me to credit. And since it's Ford, it probably won't work anyway. Can a hydraulic system store more energy than a battery of similar weight? And would its internal losses be greater or lesser than a battery? You know what I think? I think all the car companies are looking for ways to improve mileage. Some of the projects are big and serious, some are small early investigations. I think some reporter talked to some engineer, got him to throw out some wild numbers, misunderstood at least half of what the engineer said, invented a bit to make a good story out of it, and then published it.
I read that 36% efficiency is almost the figure Toyota quotes for the Prius II's full regenerative cycle. If the hydralics gets rid of the all the energy lost in these 4 steps: -Kinetic energy is transformed into electrical energy in a motor/generator -Then the electrical energy is transformed into chemical energy as the battery charges up -Later the battery discharges, transforming chemical into electrical energy -Finally, the electrical energy passes into the motor/generator acting as a motor and is transformed once more into kinetic energy Then you get almost triple the efficiency. 2.7 times the efficiency, if it's 100% efficient, anyway. Bibliography: hybridcars.com
Instead you get energy losses from the hydraulic pump, the loss due to the lines, the energy loss from the heat in the working gas of the accumulator (probably air) etc. There ain't no free lunch, no matter how you choose to store your kinetic energy. If hydraulic power were that much more efficient we'd all be using it in a lot more applications.
There is a law. Actually, three of them: the laws of thermodynamics. You can't move heat from a cooler to a hotter You can try it if you like but you far better not-er 'because the heat in the cooler will get hotter as a rule-er And that's a physical law! Work is heat and work's a curse And all the heat in the universe Is gonna cool down 'because it can't increase And there'll be no more work And there'll be perfect peace. That's entropy, man! (From a song by Flaunders & Swan quoted from memory.)
