The cool thing about what you are proposing is if you had 4 electric motors at each wheel you could transfer upto 100% to the wheel with traction.
Wheelmotors is what locomotives use. However, not practical in the scaled down version. At first blush it does sound right, and my design originally incorporated them. But I quickly realized that it was really more for show than go, just vanity. Just for showing off. When I need 4WD I can get it mechanically. You don't need all four wheels driving at highway speeds anyway, two of them would just be idling most of the time, so why bother? Locomotives however, DO need all 16 wheels powered at all times.
Mine uses a single motor with limited slip differential. It just quite simply replaces the original engine and tranny in the drive train. It's also, AC instead of DC. Far more efficient, you have far better control, need much fewer batteries, everything's smaller from the wires to the controller to the stator. Higher voltage means much fewer amps to do the same work. Fewer amps also means alot less heat. You get alot more bang for the buck.
It's all controlled by a PLC. (Programmable Logic Controller) Everything on the vehicle. Everything for controls is digital +-5 volt, from the footfeed commutator to the turn signals to the headlamp switches. Everything. No matter what control is used, it's +-5 volt and goes as an input to the PLC. No 12 volt anywhere but on the output side of the PLC and PoU. (Point of Use)
The PLC is also constantly monitoring speed, (Yes we have cruise control) AC motor performance, the DC bus, the 12 volt system, the hydrogen generator, and even monitors and controls the diesel genset! It also even knows if you have buckled your seat belts or not, and reminds you! Tells you if a door is ajar, all that rot. Controls the climate in the cabin! Everything cars have today, every little bell and whistle, this PLC the size of a brick, controls. And it's programmed from your laptop!
The motor is controlled by a variable frequency drive. It utilizes the onboard DC bus I'll be maintaining with the batteries and the genset, and converts the current into a digitally simulated 3 phase AC waveform. This allows complete control of all parameters in the motor -- from frequency, amperage, magnetism, everything. Can actually magnetically LOCK and hold the rotor completely if need be. This allows me to use
commercially available AC motors, and not have to have a custom one made! Important point here, this also makes this easily built and sold as a
refit kit for existing vehicles of any size and type! THAT's recycling!
By the way, you only need to start the diesel for longer trips. The PLC program decides if we need the diesel, and when. And starts and stops it as necessary, and even controls its RPM. Most little in-town stuff won't require it, since you can plug in when you get home. But for longer trips, you're looking at extremely good fuel mileage at highway speeds. It'll be upwards of 200 MPG if not better. Which is just the opposite of what you get with a hybrid -- they're actually worse on the highway than they are in city driving.
Also, this has Hydrogen injection to supplement the diesel. I have had this on one of my diesel pick-ups for a couple of years. With this diesel-electric powerplant, there's ample power to make lots of hydrogen. In a diesel, hydrogen is very beneficial both for performance, mileage, and also for reducing wear. The only way Hydrogen is viable to make -- where you get back almost (but not quite) what you put into it to make it -- is as a
supplement to your diesel fuel. (We cannot change the laws of thermodynamics, for starters.) But, since I have the capability of generating 5kva at all times anyway, it would be nonsensical
not to make hydrogen during the process, to supplement the diesel.
Everything on this is in my computer, in my
SolidWorks design program. A wonderful piece of software, allows me to design, build and even test
everything in the virtual world. You mentioned BMW and VW earlier? They use
SolidWorks or a similar design program as well.
The EV race car you gave us the video of earlier? I went to the guy's website and studied his specs. He's easily got $300,000 in that car. It has a 30 mile range at normal driving, then it needs plugged in. It's designed as a
novelty drag racer, basically a rich man's
toy -- he makes no pretense at all of it being in any way practical to own for just driving around, and he cannot take it on trips of any distance without trailering it and hauling it with his..... Diesel Dually pick-up.
Not cutting it down, it just is what it is. It's exactly what he wanted to build. I want to build a 200 MPG Hummer, and it's a much taller, much more challenging -- and much more universally beneficial, order.
By the way, I chose a Hummer for the symbolism. It's the poster boy of excess and waste, almost universally. The
shock value of converting it to the most practical, most luxurious, and definitely easily the highest mileage vehicle around is what I'm going for.
I am waiting for a junked one to pop up, which isn't totaled. That I can buy pretty cheap. I'm not getting any gubmint grants or funding to do this, so I have to be miserly. When the right Hummer pops up, this all starts in the real world. Gonna cost me around $122,000, give or take 5 or 6, to build this prototype.
Now I hope you understand why I so strenuously object to the OP of this thread. We don't need any freaking mandates or subsidies from the gubmint to make shit work. It only
stymies true progress in most cases. And also causes alot of waste, because people who get grants don't worry too much about being miserly.
If I got a gubmint grant for this, I would fast-track it and not worry too much about getting a junked Hummer on the cheap. I would go out and buy a used one and pay twice as much or more. I wouldn't have the incentive to really design this thing, it would be mostly trial and error. I would probably hire help as well -- all of this driving the cost up to probably triple or more what I am projecting.
See?
