VIDEO: LincVolt is on the road and on the 'net
We were just recently telling you about how Neil Young and his LincVolt project crew want to begin making similarly-powered vehicles for other people and now that we've learned more about what makes his '59 Lincoln go, we're back to fill you in. From what we can glean from the information now available, it seems the powertrain consists of a rotary engine from a Mazda RX7 running on compressed natural gas (CNG) which powers a generator that, in turn, powers the car's batteries. The batteries power the motor from UQM. At least, that's how it works for now.
Listening to conversation recorded at last week's Dreamforce conference where the car and crew made an appearance, one can hear Young's partner, Johnathan Goodwin, say, in explaining how they we expand on their currently claimed 50 mpg performance, "...we have other technology on there that will get us past our 100 mpg point..." Oh, really? More listening reveals that Goodwin is working on a small turbine which will be fueled by hydrogen. The hydrogen is to be derived from water via electrolysis with, we suppose, electricity generated from..., well, we're not sure. The Lincoln is definitely a big car but we suspect there may not be enough room under the hood for both a rotary engine and a turbine. In any case, the claims made of achieving "over-unity" (more energy put out than that put in) with this set-up were too absurd to continue listening further and we turned our attention back to the new neat-o stuff on this car that actually works. Hit the jump for more details as well as video of the LincVolt cruising to a concert in California.
[Source: LincVolt.com / Youtube]
The other bit of LincVolt news is that they have another website. This site, among other things, will supply live data from the car straight to the net. It's also a place where you can give your own ideas to the LincVolt crew and their growing community as well as vote and comment on already-posted suggestions from others. If that's not enough, there is even a place where you can upload a picture of your ride that you would like to have, eventually, LincVolted. If that's not enough to satisfy your LincVolt habit, you can check them out when they're live on Ustream. Have fun!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JamesWB 10:03AM (11/10/2008)
CNG series hybrid - good.
Hydrogen rubbish and dull video - bad.
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gorr 2:04PM (11/10/2008)
I want them to succeed but they are very ambitious and their project is way too much complicated. Using a water electrolyser, using a turbine, using an electrical generator, using electric motors drive, pluguing all that, LOL. 10 times more complicated then just using a water electrolyser to power the old ice bolted to a conventional transmission. Even the other guys that are using a water electrolyser have basics problems to tune the ice engine without, intake fires and a normal and usable torque curve. They are heading to a nasa kind of engineering, LOL. They make me dream like they make me dream in the sixties-seventies era
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Matt 3:58PM (11/10/2008)
http://www.cheniere.org/
Not free energy but untapped till now. Los Alamos National Laboratory tested and confirmed.
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Chris M 1:06AM (11/11/2008)
Sorry, but water electrolysis doesn't tap any "hidden energy" or "cosmic power" or "zero point energy field", no matter what frequency or waveform is used. No, it hasn't been "confirmed by Los Alamos National Labs", someone made that up.
Beardons "cheniere" website is the biggest load of nonsensical bafflegab I've ever seen on the web - and I've seen a lot of bafflegab! Beardon is trying to get the government to give him a big fat grant to "develop" his ideas, which are based on pseudoscience and wishful thinking, fortunately Congress has not been fooled - yet.
GenWaylaid 10:16PM (11/10/2008)
So it takes a DeLorean to travel through time and a Lincoln Continental to break the second law of thermodynamics? I guess it's all about "the right car for the job."
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Chris M 1:43AM (11/11/2008)
A big heavy land yacht with lousy aerodynamics like that 59 Lincoln is a really poor choice to try and achieve good fuel economy - but if they can pull it off, Detroit won't have much of an excuse left...
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Thomas 4:54AM (11/11/2008)
Just leave H2 alone. Charge batteries, draw power from batteries, power electric motor, that simple! The least loss of energy. I've been working with electric cars for years and I was in contact with quite a lot of companies that said they'd discovered the holy grail with H2. Just that they didn't. Watch "who killed the electric car" guys. It's not the holy grail either, but looking it the physical way the least loss is the biggest gain.
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Zral 11:35AM (11/11/2008)
I think this is the car that Neil Young filmed a documentary on last year. Him taking a trip back here to Wichita. Yes Kansas? I'm one of few blue people stuck in a red state.
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