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from the are-you-*sure*-that-will-scale-up? dept.
Converting the energy of a moving automobile into an efficient power source for that same automobile is one of the Holy Grails of motor transport, and new research suggests an important part of the solution could be to look at the friction generated between car tyres and the road itself.
Engineers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US have developed a nanogenerator that’s capable of harvesting the energy produced by the friction of a tyre rolling along the ground.
For those aren't going to RTFA no matter what: Their test vehicle was a toy car, so I've got some concerns about whether or not this will scale up to full-sized models. But if it does, it could potentially vast increase the range of electric cars, or allow them to use smaller batteries.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:10PM
OK, so convince me that this is somehow harvesting the energy from the existing friction and not just adding a new source of rolling resistance. Does it stop the tyres from heating up? Does it reduce road noise? If not, its the equivalent of trying to power your car by mounting a windmill on top.
I'm sure they've thought of that (but it isn't evident from TFA).
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:15PM
I think it's more of "this energy is already being produced. Let's harvest it!" rather than "Hey lets put a windmill on top and change everything". I don't see this as anything more unusual than harvesting excess heat from the engine to warm the passenger compartment in the winter.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:59PM
I think it's more of "this energy is already being produced. Let's harvest it!" rather than "Hey lets put a windmill on top and change everything".
Yes, but TFA and the abstract don't justify the claim that the energy they're harvesting is already being produced. It's no good just saying how much energy their modified tyres generate, and that it went up with the speed of the car - they need to do a control to show that the new tyres didn't increase the energy needed to drive the car.
I'm assuming that the fault here is the journalists that uncritically wrote TFA without asking the important questions - presumably the actual inventors didn't pick up their PhDs on eBay, are somewhat acquainted with the laws of thermodynamics, and the full paper will explain everything. However, I'd have thought the 'how did we prove this was recovered frictional energy' issue was more worthy of a mention in the abstract than the colour of the bloody LEDs that they lit.
(Score: 2) by toygeek on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:20PM
By the way if you read the article, the energy comes not from friction, but from the electricity generated by the rubber hitting the road, a static charge if I recall correctly.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2015, @10:39PM
The energy in the electricity ultimately comes from fuel for the engine in the vehicle. No way to get around the law of thermodynamics. Or conservation of energy. Or physics in general. Otherwise we'd all have invisible flying cars.