Posted on 09/01/2006 10:29:12 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW's Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.
Explains Martin Boughtwood, PML’s MD: “Until now, most electric vehicles have been little more than souped-up milk floats, limited by range and speed, with compromised performance. For those with a green conscience who also value an enhanced motoring experience, there is still something missing.
“Working in partnership with our customer, Synergy Innovations, we set out to demonstrate what our electric wheel technology is capable of. We simply took a standard BMW Mini One, discarded the engine, the disc brakes, the wheels, and the gearbox. These components were replaced by four of our electric wheels, a lithium polymer battery, a large ultra capacitor, a very small ICE with generator (so small it almost fits alongside the spare wheel), an energy management system and a sexy in-car display module.”
The benefits of PML in-wheel drive technology are;
* It is adaptable to other vehicle chassis
* It eliminates the need for gearing and mechanical drive train
* It allows more space inside the car
The vehicle has three driver-selectable modes of operation:
* Eco mode for town/city frequent start-stop driving;
* Normal mode for daily commuting and ICE- equivalent operation, and
* Sport mode for super car performance.
Other notable features include:
* No (mechanical) brakes means returned energy!
All braking is performed by the wheel motors acting as very efficient electrical generators which return almost all of the energy back to the battery system. The beauty of this dual-circuit, ultra safe system is that your green conscience can be quite content even when accelerating hard, since you are assured of collecting most of the expended energy when it is time to slow down rapidly.
ABS as standard – even when accelerating
Because the wheels are high performance motors, ABS comes as a standard function built into each wheel’s software. Now anti-skid can also be applied to acceleration since the motor can smoothly control torque delivery to/from the road in both cases. Flooring the brake or accelerator hard merely results in controlled maximum torque, giving the shortest possible stopping or acceleration time.
Clever wheels
The technology eliminates the need for crude differential gears to share power between left and right sides. The wheels are in constant communication with each other deciding 1000 times each second how much torque share is optimum for the current driving conditions. Should one wheel detect a slippery surface and take appropriate anti-skid actions, the other wheels are aware of this instantly and adopt an appropriate compensating strategy to keep the vehicle as stable as possible.
640 brake horsepower – for life!
Each wheel develops 160bhp - 640bhp in total. The original Mini One develops less than 100bhp with an engine that weighs nearly double the weight of the four electric wheels! Apart from wheel bearings there are no wearing parts in the electric wheels; this means the horsepower stays for the life of the vehicle - and beyond.
As the battery level reduces, the rear mounted ICE/generator starts to automatically top up the battery. So when you arrive at your destination you can simply park the vehicle knowing that when you return the battery will be replenished. Alternatively you can take advantage of lower cost mains electricity and plug in to recharge. So you never need to worry about battery capacity or how to recharge. During operation, as the battery level falls the generator cuts in, enabling an average speed of 60 – 70mph to be sustained with no further battery depletion.
See more information at World Car Fans
Home page for the car: PML Mini QED
And didja notice the source for this article? I guess even tree huggers like fast cars.
Lots of unsprung weight doesn't help the handling.
Need a drawing of the layout. The motors should be toward the centerline with drive shafts going to each wheel.
British... and engineering... dont really go hand in hand.
The blance of weight = power is overblown.
When they put this system on a Hummer/Excursion/F-250/HD2500 and it works as successfully, then they will have my undivided attention.
I've wondered for years why nobody has tried a diesel/electric combo in a car. Seems like a great way to take advantage of the torque of an electric and the efficiency of a diesel. Use a battery and some sort of capacitor to buffer the electric demand, and let the diesel run at a constant most-efficient rpm in the background.
Motors ~in~ the wheels is how this stuff will end up, IMHO. Computer control of exact torque supplied to each wheel as needed for acceleration or braking... the thing would drive like it was on rails.
Neat stuff, someday...
"It has motors in its wheels"
GM has an experimental fuel cell platform which uses the same idea, motors at each wheel. Incredible tourque. Variable input does away with the need for a traditional transmission, thus hundreds of pounds shed from the chassis.
Motors on individual tires should also simplify a stability control system and make it easier to detect wheel slippage and counter it.
With a well designed control system and good tires, such a car should be able to have amazing acceleration.
However, I suspect the costs are still going to be extremely prohibitive.
Large banks of Li-Ion batteries like what they appear to be using likely cost more that a standard Mini, and they have a limited recharge cycle and will have to be replaced.
I'm also curious how they have addressed the more obvious downsides of putting the motor in the wheels.
The wheels of a car are regularly partially immersed in water, snow, slush, and mud. The are also subject to much harsher shock and vibration than the main part of the car because the suspension system dampens such forces.
Even if these motors are highly efficient as both motors and generators (when braking) they are going to generate a lot of heat, and dissipating that heat adds to the difficulty of sealing the environment out of the motor, while also creating a harsher environment for the sensors and electronics that will be part of the system.
Removing the need for a drive shaft reduces weight and complexity, but it also puts the motor itself in a much harsher environment.
If they aren't addressing those problems, then all the horsepower, fuel mileage, and range statistics don't mean much of anything because it's not designed to work in a real environment.
"I've wondered for years why nobody has tried a diesel/electric combo in a car"
Ha! Diesel is still over 3.00/gal in Tulsa! How about Natural Gas and Electric? There's the ticket!
Sounds like fun.
it's a sad world we live in when they have to put these type of caveats in their press releases.
Hybrid technology like this could be huge. They need to gear it towards SUV/trucks to achieve the most benifits, though.
Doubling the economy of an SUV saves three times more fuel than switching from a non hybrid crapbox to a hybrid crapbox.
Nope, I believe they're in-wheel motors. Think of the wheel hub & disc rotors being replaced with electro rotors.
Well, sure... it doesn't have to be diesel.
The idea is the same as used in many ships and locomotives. Burn fuel to generate power that drives motors. Electric motors inherently have tremendous torque, so they're great for start/stop accell/decel, just where internal combustion engines aren't. Figure the ideal most efficient rpm speed(s) for whatever engine and let it stay there all the time.
The granularity of control that could be had over individual wheels that each contain an electric motor would be really, really cool.
There was a really nifty idea I saw sometime ago for an electric wheel that was really a spherical shape, in a socket that literally let it turn on any axis. Four of those would give you insane control over the vehicle. It could move sideways just as easily as forward or backward.
They named it the "QED"?? That's what happens when you let the Engineering Department name your new models. But it's pretty funny, nonetheless, especially in light of all the comments on this thread about the problems of putting motors on the wheels, battery performance, cost, etc. Perhaps the car is anything BUT QED.
I suppose they could have a lightweight motor design but if rotor and stator are carried in the wheel the weight would impact performance. Locomotives use something like this; there is a big diesel motor and then electric motors to the drive wheels. Works for GE.
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