RORMaxx Formula AE looks good on paper
Click above for a high-res gallery of the RORMaxx
What do 18-year-old high school students dream of these days? Superslick eco-friendly sports cars, apparently. The RORMaxx Formula AE is the alternative energy vehicle created by two seniors at Harvard?Westlake High School in California, Rory Handel and Maxx Bricklin, who wanted to create a wind-assisted car. The concept Formula AE uses (well, would use, if it were ever made) ultracapacitors, solar panels, and airflow recovery to reduce its impact on the environment. All that makes the Formula AE look great on paper: a 0-60 time of less than 4 seconds, a top speed of 155 mph and covered with some flexible photovoltaic panels. Oh, and this thing would have a range of more than 200 miles per 1.5 hour charge. While there are no plans produce the Formula AE for sale - that's pretty much a given at this stage - Handel and Bricklin say that the projected retail price would be somewhere between $80k and 150k (USD). The current plans call for the prototype Formula AE to be completed by August of this year. Thanks to Ryan N for the tip!
Gallery: RORMaxx
[Source: RORMaxx]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dennis McGrath 2:29PM (1/07/2009)
Maxx Bricklin?
Wonder who he might be related to ...
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Dennis McGrath 2:32PM (1/07/2009)
I checked their website; Malcolm Bricklin: Entrepreneurial Advisor - is Maxx's daddy.
Andy 3:23PM (1/07/2009)
Airflow recovery? Reading the website suggests the individuals in question believe they've successfully created a perpetual motion machine... routing air through a turbine will recover energy from the flow around the car. If they just did this as some form of regenerative air-braking, I might agree that it was actually recovering energy, though it's probably far less efficient than direct energy recovery from the wheels via the same drivetrain already in place to power the vehicle. Unfortunately, they seem to be under the impression that you can do this full time and come out ahead... basic fluid dynamics suggests, though, that leaving the ducts to the turbines empty would be far more effective at reducing the vehicles energy consumption. Putting a turbine on the roof of your car (or in an internal duct, or anything else) that is always operating cannot help but lower the efficiency of a vehicle... you're just taking momentum out of the air and using it to spin a fan and create electricity, but you can't pull the momentum out of the air "for free", doing so exerts MORE drag on the vehicle... if this process was perfectly efficient, you'd at best be adding extra weight to the vehicle to convert energy from kinetic to electrical and back again in the drivetrain, but since it's not (less than 60% efficiency of any wind turbine, efficiency of the generator), it's a complete waste. Not that I can blame high school students for thinking this is a good idea, though, as I've run into second year Course 16 (Aero/Astro) students at MIT who thought this could work...
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Joe 3:31PM (1/07/2009)
I'm sure it is supposed to be for regen braking. However I agree it would be more efficient to just use the electric motor. The added cost of the ducting and inner workings of the wind recovery system can't be worth the small amount of energy you would recover. And it would be small.
Joe 3:40PM (1/07/2009)
After more reading of their website and other things, I changed my mind. They think they have a perpetual motion machine. I guess $26,000/yr for high school still doesn't get you much more than pretty renderings.
Ben 2:58AM (1/11/2009)
My question to you is: since you're pretending to know so much, what have you done so far? Those brilliant individuals have done some thing that is simply "spectacular" and they are humble enough to welcome new ideas from anyone. Instead of criticizing their success, why don't you join them in making it happen? Shame on you. If you can't say something nice about them, you should shut the hell up, save your money so that you can efford to buy one of them some day. Okay? Peace.....
Joe 3:28PM (1/07/2009)
It's certainly neat, and not bad looking either. Working prototype by August is rather optimistic. I wonder how much of the internals have been designed. My guess would be not much.
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Shane 8:00PM (1/07/2009)
Very cool project. I especially appreciate the student initiative, something I really believe is key to the future of these technologies.
@Andy: Nice explanation. And I believe you about the MIT students.
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Chris M 3:43AM (1/08/2009)
They'll learn that making pretty drawings is easy but producing a full sized fully functional prototype is really hard and will take a lot longer than they expected.
I'm afraid they've underestimated the amount of drag those "airflow recovery ducts" will cause, and way overestimated the amount of power that can be produced by a tiny windmill. They'll have to learn the hard way that there ain't no free lunch.
Daddy must know that already, maybe he wants to teach that arrogant teen a lesson by letting him try and fail.
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302YJ 11:00AM (1/08/2009)
Airflow Recovery??? At my public high school my physics teacher would have been able to explain why this wouldn't work.
While they are defying the laws of physics, maybe they could generate HH0 on board to and burn that in the turbine for extra power.
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Frank 2:02PM (1/08/2009)
A few other problems - such as ultracapacitors not being a real technology, the low returns on solar, the extra dc->ac conversion (lost efficiency),
It looks like a school project, half-@$$ed and thrown together... not sure why its on autoblog...
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Tim i 3:53PM (1/13/2009)
Don't say anything if it aint something nice?
Well, whats a nice way to say your understanding of physics seems to be lacking? Is that any better?
Regarding HHO, I think that's a different matter. I see it as a simple way to get a small amount of fuel additive, from excess charge from the alternator, from water. A great supplement everyone should do. I haven't done it yet, but it doesn't have the same theoretical problem as the wind energy powered car and I'm slowly working on collecting parts to try it out in my VW bus.
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Chris M 5:14PM (1/13/2009)
Go ahead and try an "onboard electrolyzer", if you like, but you'll find that the modest decrease in fuel consumption is accompanied by a more substantial reduction in power. It would be easier to just go light on the accelerator, and more efficient to use a smaller engine.