Electric car that recharges its battery with only regenerative braking?
Today's Toronto Star (Canada's highest circulated newspaper) asks you to image the following:
Imagine a battery system in an all-electric car that can be recharged almost exclusively by braking and accelerating, or what Heins calls "regenerative acceleration." No charging from the grid. No assistance from gasoline. No cost of fuelling up.
If that sounds like perpetual motion, well, you're right. The Toronto Star article is all about Thane Heins, the basement inventor of Perepiteia, a perpetual motion device. Thane formed Potential Difference Inc. in 2005 to market the invention and he is showing demonstrations to university professors.
Along with trying to contact greens like Al Gore, Richard Branson and John Doerr, Thane has contacted several green automotive types like Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, and Google's ReCharge IT plug-in car project. Why do people that create perpetual motion machines always want to make a car? Anyway, there is a good description here and mention of patents. So I will take a shot at figuring it out. Look for a follow up soon.
Related:
- Whoops. Steorn perpetual motion machine not ready for prime time
- Future Cars on Discovery highlights fuels of the future
- EcoWatts: another "free energy" company touts their scam *ahem* invention
- Erin Brockovich to show off emissions reducing magnets at SEMA
- Water-powered car featured in local TV news report
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
stevejust 2:50PM (2/04/2008)
In the words of 1980s pop punk band Bad Religion:
"It's entropy, it's not a human issue, Entropy, it's matter of course, Entropy, energy at all levels, Entropy, from it you cannot divorce..."
Reply
Lou Grinzo 3:07PM (2/04/2008)
That whirring sound we hear in the background is Sir Isaac Newton doing about 25,000 RPM.
Reply
meme 3:26PM (2/04/2008)
"In this house, we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!"
Reply
calebe 3:42PM (2/04/2008)
another Einstein.
Reply
rgseidl 3:55PM (2/04/2008)
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. It is of course possible to use an energy storage device (battery, supercaps, isolated flywheel) like a spring, converting potential energy and kinetic energy back and forth into each other.
The catch is that each conversion is imperfect as some of the energy is dissipated as heat, so a perpetual motion machine of the second type is not possible. Supercaps and isolated flywheels are generally better suited to recuperative braking and boost acceleration because of the high power levels involved.
For reference, the total kinetic energy stored in a car weighing 1800kg (~4000lbs) and traveling at 108kph (67mph, 30m/s) is 810kJ (0.225kWh, not counting rotatory energy). Some of that is inevitably lost to wind resistance, rolling resistance and internal friction in the driveline and unfired engine as the vehicle is brought to a halt.
Reply
Matt 6:19PM (2/04/2008)
Perpetual motion?
No, just Newton's first law:
A physical body will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant velocity, unless an external net force acts upon it.
This statement is over 300 years old! Now that someone has figured out how to remove that "external net force" (magnetic friction) and feed it back into the circuit we see the resultant "perpetual motion". For a real eye opener on the limits of our knowledge of electricity and magnetism visit and read carefully http://www.cheniere.org/
Since I'm not a physics professor or an electrical engineer I'm curious to see what others think about this!!
Let's stop burning things to create a motive force for vehicles. Clean renewable electrical power, and magnetism is the answer. Save the atmosphere for breathing and use oil for recyclable products!
Off the soapbox now,
Matt
Reply
Karkus 4:09PM (2/04/2008)
Perpetual motion doesn't belong on ABG. Enough already.
Besides, even if you did make system that recovered all of the braking energy and was able to reuse it, you still lose due to wind resistance (unless you drive in outer space)
Reply
mrbell321 7:33PM (2/04/2008)
"In the words of 1980s pop punk band Bad Religion"
Entropy came out in 1990, and most of their success happened in the 90's, and tho they did form 10 years ealier, I wouldn't call them a "1980's band"
Also I don't think I'd call them "pop punk"... They really are more hardcore than pop.
How that for off topic?
Reply
Ernie 5:06PM (2/04/2008)
Matt said:
"Since I'm not a physics professor or an electrical engineer..."
You don't have to be. You just have to pass high school physics.
See, there's this thing called friction. It converts kinetic energy into heat. It comes from one substance rubbing against another substance. That substance can be solid, liquid, or gas, but so long as something is rubbing against something else, it exists. The force that friction exerts on a body in motion is what keeps it from being in motion forever.
The reason that no perpetual motion machine could ever exist with no further energy input, is that they would have to overcome friction, *and then some* to keep working. It would have to somehow produce energy, in which case it's not perpetual motion.
The same goes for electricity by the way. Instead, it's called resistance (which again, converts energy into heat).
Reply
paradoxbomb 5:18PM (2/04/2008)
Seriously, enough with the woo-woo. Every single claim of perpetual motion has been debunked, none has ever worked. Even if you were able to remove all the energy loss from charging/recharging a battery, you'd still have friction from the tires hitting the road! Sorry, it's impossible.
We would all be better off if everyone could get past this and focus on some actual science.
Reply
Tim 5:31PM (2/04/2008)
This invention MAY help increase the efficiency and therefore range of an EV.
Reply
Matt 6:31PM (2/04/2008)
Ernie and Karkus
Please read my post carefully. You are both misreading what I said.
Matt
Reply
stevejust 7:07PM (2/04/2008)
@MrBell:
"1980s" because every album they've made since Against the Grain doesn't really matter in the whole scheme of things, and everything they recorded before it really, really did. I still see them play shows when I can. But the last 18 years of recordings aren't as good as the first 10, so hence "1980s."
"Pop Punk" because "hardcore" now refers to bands from circa 1985 onward that were more like the Cro-Mags or Youth of Today through the metalcore or new metal bands of today. With their melodies and relatively accessible sound they now (especially since, say, the MTV video for the re-recorded 21st Century Digital Boy on Stranger than Fiction in 1994) fall into the realm of pop-punk.
Reply
Chris M 2:09AM (2/05/2008)
Every so often, someone posts on the Tesla Motors blog a proposal to "extend the range" by connecting generators to the wheels or add a windmill, to which we point out that it was already proposed and it doesn't work. Most electric drive vehicles use the motor as a generator, converting momentum back into electricity and slowing the car - it is called "regenerative braking". But if you tried to drive around with the "regenerative brakes" on all the time, it would actually reduce the driving range and performance.
On rare occasions, someone posts a claim to have a secret method of generating unlimited power, which inevitably turns out to be either a nutter or a scam artist. They don't get anywhere, as the folks at Tesla Motors are experts and know what they are doing. They've also had way too much experience dealing with the nutters and frauds.
Matt: you mentioned Tom Beardens website chenier.org. Bearden is a top notch pseudoscientist, with an elaborate bafflegab designed to fool the scientifically illiterate. He make wildly grandiose claims which never pan out - he claimed in 2003 that he would have a "superluminal communication device on the market within a year". 5 years later, no such device exists. Most of his references are from other pseudoscientific quacks and frauds.
Beardon has his own "free-energy over-unity zero-point" gizmo, which he calls "MEG", a rather odd and inefficient transformer. In spite of grandiose claims, it doesn't produce any net energy, it looses energy due to the phenomenon of hysteresis, something Beardon appears to be completely ignorant of.
Reply
paradoxbomb 3:32AM (2/05/2008)
The biggest piece of evidence against all the perpetual motion claims is the fact that no one is rich on it. If you had a working perpetual motion machine that generated endless power today, you'd be a billionaire tomorrow, guaranteed.
If any one of the quacks claiming a perpetual motion machine actually had one, they'd show it to the world immediately - it's not like it would be hard to verify that it worked.
Like I said before, it's a waste of time and blog space. We need real science, not modern-day alchemy!
Reply
BikerBill 8:44AM (2/05/2008)
If I never see another post on perpetual motion again, it will be too soon.
Reply
calebe 8:49AM (2/05/2008)
Funny how people just read a small bit and jump to a conclusion. which makes every thing they say just dribble.If you read , he is not saying it is a Perpetual motion machine. It is to boost efficiency. They will be able to explain it I'm sure. The labs that have seen it say it works, They just don't know why it works.
Reply
ty 9:20AM (2/05/2008)
Overunity/perpetual motion doesn't exist, true. Sort of. We DO know of one. It's called the atomic bomb. Note: Due to some really BAD side effects, nobody except a complete wacko would propose everybody drive a nuclear powered vehicle. This statement does NOT include electric vehicles 'fueled' by electricity from a nuclear power plant.
On the other hand if a way is found to tap the inherent energy found within the atom without the radioactive side effects........It's worth excercising your brain cells to at least think about.
Electric vehicles are soooo tantilizingly close. With today's tech, I'd build a plug-in diesel/electric serial hybrid with onboard chargeing suppliments. (solar or wind) My first target? Agricultural equipment. Why
? 1. Speed is NOT a facter in their operation. 2. Weight isn't a problem. 3. They use a tremendous amout of fossel fuel to get the job done now.
Reply
Alex 9:44AM (2/05/2008)
i also have some dehydrated water i'd like to sell to his investors.
Reply
Tim 9:57AM (2/05/2008)
A heat pump does NOT make heat, it simply a super efficient method of collecting and transferring heat energy from point A to point B.
And electromagnetic generator does not MAKE electricity. It simply collects and transfers electrons from point A to point B. Wikipedia states that"
“The generator moves an electric current, but does not create electric charge, which is already present in the conductive wire of its windings. It is somewhat analogous to a water pump, which creates a flow of water but does not create the water inside.”
If this were true, then the wires would lose electrons and the metal would change into another material in a VERY short time. Therefore, the electrons are coming from OUTSIDE the generator like the water is coming from OUTSIDE the pump.
Although the correlation between electrons and magnetism is well known, nobody is EXACTLY sure where the electrons come from only that it takes mechanical energy to collect them.
Perhaps electric generators as a category should be called "Electron Pumps" because they collect and move electrons from point A (zero point?) to point B (the motor) rather than just creating it.
Is this device simply a super efficient Electron Pump powered by the electrons it collects and leaving extra for us? Is simply collecting stored energy considered “over unity?”
Reply