I recently went to an instructor training course at Ohio Tech college a few weeks ago. This helps to keep me current on the "latest and the greatest" as I teach. THis year I took a course on alternative fuels. One day was on compressed natural gas, another day I heard a woman from NASA come in and speak on the hydrogen fuel cell, another day was on Bio diesel, and vegetable oil, and then we learned quite a bit about hybrid technology, specifically the Toyota Prius.
I gotta admit, before going in there, I was a little worried as to where the performance car scene would go in fifteen years. After the seminar, im not too worried. With a lot of the alt. fuels, the octane rating is so high, that they will be ADDING performance. For instance, if we ran hydrogen in an internal combustion engine - WOW! You can make some serious power.
And the electric motors - these things will be seriously fun. The "slip" is the distance between the rotor and the stator inside the electric motor. Through computer control, you can vary the "slip curve" of the electric motor to make insane torque. With a large electric motor, some serious voltage, and computer control, you can make a serious performance car.
The one thing about these hybrids though is that they are going to be REAL INTERESTING to work on......some of the technology that goes into these things is wild. And the people that wrote the algorythms for the PCM on the Prius were genious's. THey are dealing with not only the gasoline engine, but the high voltage, low voltage, two electric motor/ generators, a CONvertor, and an INvertor. Crazy.
I gotta admit, before going in there, I was a little worried as to where the performance car scene would go in fifteen years. After the seminar, im not too worried. With a lot of the alt. fuels, the octane rating is so high, that they will be ADDING performance. For instance, if we ran hydrogen in an internal combustion engine - WOW! You can make some serious power.
And the electric motors - these things will be seriously fun. The "slip" is the distance between the rotor and the stator inside the electric motor. Through computer control, you can vary the "slip curve" of the electric motor to make insane torque. With a large electric motor, some serious voltage, and computer control, you can make a serious performance car.
The one thing about these hybrids though is that they are going to be REAL INTERESTING to work on......some of the technology that goes into these things is wild. And the people that wrote the algorythms for the PCM on the Prius were genious's. THey are dealing with not only the gasoline engine, but the high voltage, low voltage, two electric motor/ generators, a CONvertor, and an INvertor. Crazy.
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