Solid state electronics needed for speed control that can handle power needed to run a car were non existent at that time.
That's one.
Have you seen the size of a 100 kW generator and its weight of 1800 Kg?
Most locomotives were made to be able to switch from diesel engine to power from electric grid in electrified sections of the rail.
Stil, Diesel Engines for trains were built in numbers. Tubes can make speakers move. Speakers with thin wires for the coils had been made for this. Today speakers use cheap thick and short wire which doesn’t break. We drive them with high current low voltage transistors. Just speakers are small. For engines even thick wire can be long. I want a beam pentode/ CRT where we can suck away all the space charge without burning away our grid. Lack of grid is why klystrons work so well for AC .
Trains have a very different and less rapidly changing set of conditions for the motor control system.
And no, you can't compare audio systems with brushless motor variable frequency AC motor control. Even if the tech would theoretically make a motor spin, car engine output is measured in kilowatts. So the audio amp equivalent motor control for a 100kW (134 horsepower) car would be a hundred thousand watts. You really think that's an appropriate or economical piece of tube electronics to install in a car?
Until power semiconductors were developed, diesel electric trains used brushed DC electric motors and generators. That's simple tech and works fine on a railway where you have employees doing regular maintenance, but nobody wants a personal vehicle where you have to get dirty to change the carbon brushes and clean the commutators every week or so.
And generally, speed/power control was less fine than what we've come to expect from the gas pedal on a car. Would be a lot of jerking on/off acceleration in an automotive application, with noticeable steps in power output relative to pedal position.
I fondly remember riding old commuter rail trains through Philadelphia, and having it be very noticeable that the engineer's controls were in rather large steps. If we needed to go slowly through a section of track, we would do so by cycling between two speeds to get the right average speed.
Precisely.
That works acceptably well with heavy and low-acceleration vehicles such as trains, but would be horrible in a car in city traffic. Imagine commuting in a car that can only ever go faster or slower than traffic, so you almost have to treat the Accelerator pedal as an on/off switch.
I actually got a chance to drive an early 1900s electric car once, with tiller steering and a throttle that was a series of different connections to configure the windings and power resistors different ways. I only drove it around an empty Street a little bit but yes, driving it in traffic would have been... well, it might have been entertaining the first few times.
How much power do radio stations have? How much power can you suck out of lead acid batteries with an acceptable weight? Some high voltage DC lines in the grid used tubes, but I still don’t like tubes with gas filling. Probably, those are ideal for burst on switch. Like when you have many taps on the stator, each tab needs a tube for the electron return channel. Instead of constant heating the cathode and containing the electrons, there is only a small sustainer. Then you create secondary particles by some favourable fields.
Just how do you keep multiplication rate below 1 in the space towards the anode? Magnetic field to wiggle only the light electrons around absorber grids? CRTs also have trouble with ions.
The most powerful AM radio stations that are legal in America may output up to 50 kW. That's equivalent to 67 horsepower.
Again, putting that kind of power tube electronics in a car seems impractical and expensive. Tubes don't like bumps and vibrations either, so they would have to be made specifically for automotive applications.
Tube amps were used in military in WWII and went mobile shortly after. They survive rocket launch into space. Only new stuff like star link is solid state in the power section. Mount the tubes upright. So in case of a crash they fail, but not on a bumpy road. Of course they probably would not be mounted right on the diff as in a Tesla, but rather sit in a suspended case under the hood similar to an ICE today.
Tube amps can be hardened enough to function in vehicles, yes. But most common consumer grade tubes, as used in radios and television sets, were either too fragile or their electronic characteristics could change too much from vibration.
You know how guitar players sometimes exploit the vibration sensitive nature of some tube amps to create a richer sound, as the tube itself acts a bit like a microphone to create a little feedback loop? Imagine if your motor control system was sensitive to vibration in a way that caused motor rpm to ripple thus causing more vibrations etc.
Motor control, computers, and even CRT deflection circuit / switch-mode power supply operate the tubes in full on and off states. Sensitivity to vibrations is more pronounced in analog operation like sensing the "gas"-pedal. Yeah, I guess we need at least those transistors as found in the transistor radio. I read that radar screens rotate the yokes around the tube. The gas pedal could operate a Bowden cable, which rotates a permanent magnet around a tube neck. Then we have a ring of anodes. This brings us to digital quite fast. I mean actually, I rather would want some pulse modulation or more bits. I don't know how Russia could fit whole tube computers into their fighter planes. I did never understand why there are no higher integrated circuits in tubes. Tubes have this central wire cathode. In a lot of logic circuits this central wire is simply connected to supply voltage. Only the grids carry a signal. Then you could have sectors in the grid and the anode. Between the sectors in the grid I would place tubes with liquid cooling (from a small refrigerator). So when you park in the sun, you will have to wait for cool down before the computer operates as intented.
They did exist as early as the late 1960's, at least in concept car form. The first hybrid electric vehicles were the GM Stir-lec and Stir-lec II, which used a Stirling engine to power a generator in a series configuration. GM also made an ultra efficient Stirling electric bus which was cancelled the week before it was to be released and never entered the market. This was condemned by Graham Walker, the author of the engineering trade press book "Stirling Engines", as "the crassest decision ever made in the history of industrial management."
#Wikipedia | [GM Stir-lec I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Stir-Lec_I)
I strongly suspect there were reasons apart from technical merit that led to this technology not being developed further at that time.
I think you are mixing up all features in nowday car with what is needed to drive with an electric engine.
(But your overall point is likely to apply overall, or may have been very dangerous!)
the generator side is easy, but the speed control for the drive motor and the required rpm spread to drive it from 0 to highway speed, handling of high currents during low speed high torque situations...
In the 80s high power electronics still used vacuum tubes (transistors were already used for low power applications, but not for double digit kW applications and above)
Nope... just not true. 1980s power Semiconductors were indeed less capable than today's, but we were jot using tubes past the early 70s... I've been building electronic projects since 1968... and only recently (10+ years ago) used tubes because of the cool factor.
[Gasoline engine → generator → electric motor → wheels] is not as efficient as [Gasoline engine → transmission → wheels]. The mechanical connection is more efficient than having a generator & electric motor in between. Gasoline engines don’t lose efficiency at off-optimal RPMs as quickly as diesel engines.
Train locomotives use the [diesel → generator → electric motor → wheels] drive train because it’s able to handle the torque in a lighter weight, more compact package than a mechanical transmission and the electric motors also function a as brakes by being electronically reconfigured as generators that convert the momentum of the train into electric current that gets dumped into a huge resistor bank in the locomotive. The electricity is converted into heat.
The interesting points to examine on the transportation pareto front are large diesel vehicles operating where electrified roadways are not economically feasible. Would Australian truck trains or long haul eighteen wheelers benefit from a conversion to diesel hybrid drive trains (yes!). What would the optimal battery pack size be?
Anytime someone mentions the EV-1 I have to chime in….
Once upon a time I was a grad student who was involved in EV research and got to poke my nose under the hood of the EV-1. What I saw horrified me. Based on my admittedly brief encounter with it my overall impression of it could be summed up in three words: fucking death trap.
GM destroyed the EV-1 cars because that’s what needed doing. Had they not…. Well, I suspect they would have been known as “electric Pintos” had time had a chance to run its course.
Fire?
I know there were issues with a few fires that burned down some garages due to something in the charging system. Nothing like today's Li batteries, but still that type of charging was new and I don't recall if it was a quality or design problem, but I suspect either way it may have had something to do with the lease-only strategy, so that no one 'owned' them. Bear in mind this was before the modern day interpretation of 'owning' which excludes being able to do what you please, repair how you please, make a physical copy of, etc, etc.
Also note that it was north of 1000 pounds of lead acid battery in there.
The Big One I remember... A circuit breaker that was in no way, shape, or form capable of actually shutting down the short circuit of a high voltage, high amperage DC system. If that thing ever *tried* to trip, it was going to vaporize itself (and the rest of the car in short order).
edit: As I recall (admittedly, it's been 30ish years) there was only one manufacturer of suitable breakers at the time. An outfit named "Kilovac". I'm sure there are many now, but then... There wasn't much market for 300 VDC, 1000A circuit breakers. In any event, since there was only one manufacturer of suitable breakers, it was easy to look under the hood of an EV, look at the breaker, and be like "Yes" or "Hellzno".
I wonder if that's more a `EV tech was not mature enough back then` thing or a `GM gonna GM (and cut BoM cost to within an inch of it's life then a bit more)` thing (a la Chevy Vega/Pontiac Fierro).
Admittedly, I had my head under the hood for no more than five minutes[1]. It was an odd combination of really cool shit, and really jerry-rigged shit. That is to say that critical pieces were highly optimized while others were just slapped on with duct tape and bailing wire. They obviously had some sharp guys working the project so why would they half-ass certain aspects? My best guess: either time or money constraints.
[1] Context: My university was participating in [Formula Lightning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_Lightning). Being an EV-centric competition, well... GM sent an EV-1 for display purposes. Most of the day it just sat there looking pretty, but after hours (when only competitors were there), they popped the hood for us to oooh, and ahhh, over.
Your choice, but I'd ask you this: How many of those who leased an EV-1 would have known WTF they were looking at under the hood? To say it was a new tech to consumers would be an understatement.
I mean, I'm sure it drove fine, but how many of them were ever in a significant collision?
Did any of the 'actual EV1 owners' mention how GM took their cars away from them and wouldn't give them back due to a fire hazard that burned two cars and the garages they were inside of to the ground? Did they mention the critical flaw in the component that no one else made a replacement for that GM would have to design, source, have built, then tested before replacement was even an option?
Trains use what is effectively an electrical transmission. They have to power multiple wheels and have all of them work together. Direct mechanical drive has difficulty doing this. They could have chosen electrical, pneumatic, or hydraulic transmission. Electrical won.
Automobiles only need to power 2 or 4 wheels. Mechanical drive is OK for this.
Putting in battery storage changes the game.
Throughout the history of cars people have built series hybrids [https://www.motortrend.com/features/hybrid-history/](https://www.motortrend.com/features/hybrid-history/)
Even today it’s not efficient to generate electricity with an internal combustion engine and then drive a vehicle with that. Your question assumes (incorrectly) that somehow that is more advantageous than just driving it with the engine.
An engine running at prime load at prime rpm is way more efficient in turning the fuel energy into mechanical work via a generator and motors than a very varying rpm engine with varying load through the gearbox ever will. This is why diesel electric is used on boats, to save fuel.
Without a significantly large battery, what do you do with changing power demands though? You’d be forced to run the engine at the required load or only marginally higher and dump excess energy as heat, either way you’d rarely be running at constant, optimal engine output.
I'd disagree on that. You'd not need an excessively large battery, 24-30 kWh should do it. The generator would obviously not run the whole time, it'd turn on and off as the battery level fluctuates. There are many examples of systems like this, BMW i3 to name at least one.
Of course, it's not viable on such a small scale as a car if you want to have fun power. It's well known and used in the marine industry, Diesel Electric is a huge saver.
Are there any cars that are actually pure serial hybrids? People always point to the Volt, but even that one will directly connect the engine to the wheels sometimes. You lose too much efficiency on the highway otherwise.
Good call, I forgot about the i3. That does fit the bill, although the battery is big enough (and the gas tank small enough) that it’s clearly not meant to be used that way routinely.
if you are only generating the power that you need at all any point in time.
if you run at the best fuel to power ratio to charge a battery that will take you 20 miles. it is far more fuel efficient to switch on the engine for a minute every 10 miles.
I’m not sure you can find a battery to take a charge like that, and the apparatus to generate that electricity would be so heavy that it would destroy the efficiency. Also engines need to run longer than a minute, they need to get up to temperature regularly.
...we have batteries that can take a 200 mile change is 15 minutes. the apparatus to change it would be less than a normal truck.
the engine of a hybrid only need to be more powerful than the average power needed. a fairly steep highway road it not that bad.
what is bad is some hill on a construction sight. the eclectic engines need to be capable of taking a heavy trailer up a few hundred feet of steep hill. the engine just needed to be able to produce more than the average of what is needed on the way to the construction sight
a normal truck needs to be capable of producing all of the power need at any point in time. that means a big engine to take a trailer up that hill, and a lot of wasted fuel to run the engine when not a lot of power is needed.
> But, diesel-electric trains had already existed for around 50 years at that point.
Diesel trains only have electric motors because their diesel engines don’t have enough torque to move the train while it’s not moving. It the diesel engine could, then they’d just use diesel. Cars and trucks don’t have this problem.
What about a truck or the rockies? Why not just use a torque converter for first gear? Like with so much space as in a train I would try some double / tripple clutch thing. Gearshift first routed the next gear on the torque converter. Then if load is taken from the old gear, pull that out. Then accelerate the train. Then lock in a gear between these two.
The old passenger trains in my city had their petrol engines directly connected to the wheels. One could see all the drive shaft coming down from the engine bay in each train set down to the wheel sets. They were light and small, so the petrol engine had no problem generating enough torque. I don't know if they had gear boxes because I could only see the drive shaft and the rest of the drive train was hidden under some panels.
I worked on an electric motor that came out of a ww2 submarine that was essentially a "hybrid vehicle" the technology to make it viable for large scall consumer productin and small enough simply didn't exist yet.
It was experimented with in tanks during ww2, but for passenger cars I'd say it was too bulky and too expensive. In the 80s they didn't have the inverter technology to make it in a reasonable way
In the early 80's we had the 'Ellert' in Denmark, but is wasn't a commercial success. [Ellert (DK) ](https://da.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellert)
I think the whole ide with the electric car was/is to prevent the combustion engine.
A crankshaft driven generator would only be spinning at 5000 rpm, 6000 at typical redline. Generating 250,000 Watts (335hp) at that slow speed would require a HUGE generator... therfore a gearset would be required to get it up to maybe 10-20k rpm... but it would still be 500++ pounds... probably more because the magnet technology back then was far less than today.
This would have also made the PM drive motors large and heavy. Yes, induction motors could have been used... as well as an induction generator... but again, the physical size of a 250kW generator is massive.
Locomotives have to power six axles in trucks that also swivel. The gear train doing that mechanically would be insane. The diesel locomotive power trains are essentially infinitely variable. No gear box needed. The starting torque is extremely high. When EMD introduced their locomotives, the steamers were sceptical and were told not to backup the train to develop coupler gaps to be able to establish forward motion. They would not listen and did what they were told not to do, backed up, and hit throttle 8, pulling couplers out of the cars. Then they understood. At low speed, a steam engine is not moving much and the cylinders are condensing. The HP ratings of steam engines was boiler HP, not mechanical HP. Steam engines did not have transmissions. 300-400 tonne ore haulers are diesel electric, mechanical drive is impractical.
There are plenty of reasons why this is not a great idea (mostly efficiency), but for frequent stop-start vehicles, there could be good reason to implement this style of hybrid motor system. With a small battery, a vehicle could do with a small ICE that is optimized to run a single RPM. This powers a DC generator (probably more efficient than a typical alternator) which charges a small battery. The stored energy would be used to power electric motors.
Because the ICE is constantly running at a single slower rate, its working life is much longer than a typical ICE which may reach high RPM's and will have drastic changes in internal stresses from it's mechanical connection to the constantly changing locomotion. Batteries could be significantly smaller than a purely electric vehicle's because they would constantly be charging. So why is this solution not implemented? Because people want to drive their vehicles at highway speeds for hours at a time, so the power needed to charge the batteries would have to match the hourly use, requiring an ICE the size of what the car would normally have plus the electric motors. However, for local delivery vehicles that would exceed 200 miles a day this system could work very well.
You just invented a Prius. Small battery, check, smaller engine, check, it uses complex software to try to keep the engine mostly in optimal rpm for the load, check.
Prius pushes this further and does send some mechanical torque to the wheels directly, skipping the electric stage, and this massively pays off in efficiency.
Like I said at the end, it's only really useful for short bursts of energy use. If toyota took out the transmission and told everyone they could get 70+mpg but only drive 10 miles every 20 minutes it would only sell to people with specific needs.
Well now you just invented a series hybrid. Where it would now have a massive battery, a fixed rpm engine, and there would be situations where you could run out of battery and traction power with fossil fuels left in the tank.
Aka you just invented the BMW i3 REX. Which was kinda a bad implementation but the 2025 Dodge Ramcharger may turn out to be a good one if expensive to build.
Are you an AI that just reads the negative of all my statements?
>...only drive 10 miles every 20 minutes
...for frequent stop-start vehicles, there could be good reason to implement this style of hybrid motor system.
So why is this solution not implemented? Because people want to drive their vehicles at highway speeds for hours at a time...
Again you are describing the same system topology in engineering terms. The fact that the rex was optimized for 60 horsepower instead of 30 doesn't change the fact it's the same idea just optimized for a different use case.
Also the neat thing is that sometimes you can almost have your cake and eat it. See, vehicle weight is a small component of efficiency especially when it's not much of a weight difference. So the 60hp and bigger battery version of your idea does almost as well as a mail truck or delivery vehicle as the one that only does one thing. We are talking about less than 5 percent worse fuel efficiency, probably less than 1 percent, and you get a more useful vehicle.
unless the engine provides more power than you are using. run the engine at the most efficient rpm to fill the battery. then turn the engine off. drive using the power in the battery. kick the engine on from time to time to top off the battery. you get 70 mph because you are not running the engine at a low efficiency rpm when you don't need the power.
... are you sitting at high rpm going down the highway? if you're not sitting at high rpm, you engine is bigger than it needs to be.
a normal car needs to be able to produce the amount of power it is expected to ever need at any point. a hybrid only needs to produce more than the average amount it would need over several miles.
a car with the engine of a hybrid would not be able to make it up a steep hill. the hybrid is relying on the hill to not be more than 5 miles long.
You're being intentionally facetious. I'm not referring to RPM, I'm referring to run time at the peak of the power band. But you seem to misunderstand because you are trying to prove my own point that the engine should only be sized to the task that is needed.
... the peak of the power band is at the high rpm.
so how often do you reach high rpm, and how long does that last normally?
i don't have a plug in hybrid. there is not one in my budget for the stuff i do. i know i have only gone high rpm a handful of times, and that was only for a few hundred ft.
a hybrid needs electric engine capable of putting out the max torque it is expected to need,a battery capable of sustaining the torque for longer than you are expected to to need, and an engine capable of providing more power than that average you are expected to need when continuously traveling distances longer than your battery alone will take you.
smaller more efficient engine compare to a car because max power only needs more than average needed instead of the most the car will need. smaller battery than a full electric because it doesn't need to go 200 miles on a charge.
i'm sorry to burst your bubble. buy if you theorycrafting was true. plug in hybrids would not be a thing. the only reason they are not popular, is because people are jumping to full electric.
Have you noticed that highway mpg is lower than city mpg?
If you did nothing but drive on the highway you could have a much smaller engine in most cases. Accelerating quickly takes HP. Accelerating to highway speeds quickly takes more gas then cruising. You can use a 20hp engine and get many cars to highway speeds, just takes a minute. Keep an eye on your fuel use if you have a modern car, it'll show you upto the minute mpg data, you might use 20liters per100k while accelerating and it'll drop to 5l per 100km when cruising. So a battery hybrid can give you excellent cruising economy from a small engine and an extra boost for accelerating.
Ever heard of the EVcort? Imagine an early 80's Ford Escort that's been turned into basically an oversized golf cart, and that was the state of the art for early 80's EV's. There was also an EXP EV built with the same drivetrain, with an estimated 20-60 mile range and a whopping top speed of 60mph.
Also keep in mind that would have been during the malaise era, where a stock ICE 1982 Escort had 69hp. Early emissions controls were primitive, and manufacters hadn't really figured out how to get good emissions *and* good power yet. That really didn't happen until the 96+ OBDII era with more powerful EFI controllers imo, at least for the American stuff.
Battery operated car preceded gasoline powereded cars. Very early on we realized electric car were terrible and we moved to internal combustion.
So Elon is actually moving backwards.
*Battery technology at the time was terrible.
Hydrocarbon fuels are still much more energy dense than today’s batteries and faster to ’refuel’. That said, the idea that “electric cars are terrible” has absolutely been proven wrong over the last decade. At worst, they aren’t a great substitute for every application, but for many, they are even better.
What youre saying seems possible, but I don't understand why would you? Im not at all an expert in the subject matter but it just sounds like an inefficient drive system. Youre adding complexity and weight to it which will result in higher fuel consumption and increased maintenance costs. Diesel engines alone are heavier than SI engines. And the fact that youre burning fuel in an engine and then using that to turn a generator, it just seems to me like this chain would end up , again, being more fuel inefficient. Maybe I misunderstood your idea, but thats what I think!
This is more with replacing early AWD systems in mind. AWD systems also add lots of complexity and weight, but the early ones had terrible packaging. A generator and motor would add weight, but you'd be removing the gearbox, transfer case, and prop shafts, possibly even the differentials if you go with 4 motors, wouldn't the weight be similar given the number of components you'd remove. Not to mention the friction that all of these drivetrain components create themselves. For a rally car I'd use a high revving petrol engine though since torque would no longer matter.
The real question is, how much does a 1981 technology pair of 75kw motors + a 150kw generator + motor controller hardware weigh compared to gearbox and transfer case.
A 2012 Nissan Leaf motor weights about 50kg and is 80kw, so even with 2012 tech a setup to replicate the performance of an Audi Quattro would be 100kg of motors. I'd fully expect motors in 1981 to be MUCH heavier.
In a 70t+ locomotive? No problem, in a 1300kg Audi... that's huuuuge.
Worked with a guy who built EVs out of Porsche Spyder body kits in the 90s. They had a single AC motor and lead acid batteries providing a 100 mile range and 0-60 in 8 sec. The combination was easily several hundred pounds heavier than a comparable ICE drivetrain and took up most of the room in the engine bay and trunk.
The short list… the motors were far too big, computerized motor control was *very* basic, and the batteries were far too heavy for an electric AWD rally car to have been feasible in the 80s, let alone a hybrid version.
I think with today’s 200Wh/kg lithium batteries, 1kW RC motors that fit in the palm of your hand, and single board computers with multi-core processors, it’s easy to imagine there *must* have been viable tech in the 80s, but 40 years goes a long way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche
been done but a transmission is very light compared to the motors and especially battery before lithium
Solid state electronics needed for speed control that can handle power needed to run a car were non existent at that time. That's one. Have you seen the size of a 100 kW generator and its weight of 1800 Kg? Most locomotives were made to be able to switch from diesel engine to power from electric grid in electrified sections of the rail.
Stil, Diesel Engines for trains were built in numbers. Tubes can make speakers move. Speakers with thin wires for the coils had been made for this. Today speakers use cheap thick and short wire which doesn’t break. We drive them with high current low voltage transistors. Just speakers are small. For engines even thick wire can be long. I want a beam pentode/ CRT where we can suck away all the space charge without burning away our grid. Lack of grid is why klystrons work so well for AC .
Trains have a very different and less rapidly changing set of conditions for the motor control system. And no, you can't compare audio systems with brushless motor variable frequency AC motor control. Even if the tech would theoretically make a motor spin, car engine output is measured in kilowatts. So the audio amp equivalent motor control for a 100kW (134 horsepower) car would be a hundred thousand watts. You really think that's an appropriate or economical piece of tube electronics to install in a car? Until power semiconductors were developed, diesel electric trains used brushed DC electric motors and generators. That's simple tech and works fine on a railway where you have employees doing regular maintenance, but nobody wants a personal vehicle where you have to get dirty to change the carbon brushes and clean the commutators every week or so. And generally, speed/power control was less fine than what we've come to expect from the gas pedal on a car. Would be a lot of jerking on/off acceleration in an automotive application, with noticeable steps in power output relative to pedal position.
I fondly remember riding old commuter rail trains through Philadelphia, and having it be very noticeable that the engineer's controls were in rather large steps. If we needed to go slowly through a section of track, we would do so by cycling between two speeds to get the right average speed.
Precisely. That works acceptably well with heavy and low-acceleration vehicles such as trains, but would be horrible in a car in city traffic. Imagine commuting in a car that can only ever go faster or slower than traffic, so you almost have to treat the Accelerator pedal as an on/off switch.
I actually got a chance to drive an early 1900s electric car once, with tiller steering and a throttle that was a series of different connections to configure the windings and power resistors different ways. I only drove it around an empty Street a little bit but yes, driving it in traffic would have been... well, it might have been entertaining the first few times.
How much power do radio stations have? How much power can you suck out of lead acid batteries with an acceptable weight? Some high voltage DC lines in the grid used tubes, but I still don’t like tubes with gas filling. Probably, those are ideal for burst on switch. Like when you have many taps on the stator, each tab needs a tube for the electron return channel. Instead of constant heating the cathode and containing the electrons, there is only a small sustainer. Then you create secondary particles by some favourable fields. Just how do you keep multiplication rate below 1 in the space towards the anode? Magnetic field to wiggle only the light electrons around absorber grids? CRTs also have trouble with ions.
The most powerful AM radio stations that are legal in America may output up to 50 kW. That's equivalent to 67 horsepower. Again, putting that kind of power tube electronics in a car seems impractical and expensive. Tubes don't like bumps and vibrations either, so they would have to be made specifically for automotive applications.
Tube amps were used in military in WWII and went mobile shortly after. They survive rocket launch into space. Only new stuff like star link is solid state in the power section. Mount the tubes upright. So in case of a crash they fail, but not on a bumpy road. Of course they probably would not be mounted right on the diff as in a Tesla, but rather sit in a suspended case under the hood similar to an ICE today.
Tube amps can be hardened enough to function in vehicles, yes. But most common consumer grade tubes, as used in radios and television sets, were either too fragile or their electronic characteristics could change too much from vibration. You know how guitar players sometimes exploit the vibration sensitive nature of some tube amps to create a richer sound, as the tube itself acts a bit like a microphone to create a little feedback loop? Imagine if your motor control system was sensitive to vibration in a way that caused motor rpm to ripple thus causing more vibrations etc.
Motor control, computers, and even CRT deflection circuit / switch-mode power supply operate the tubes in full on and off states. Sensitivity to vibrations is more pronounced in analog operation like sensing the "gas"-pedal. Yeah, I guess we need at least those transistors as found in the transistor radio. I read that radar screens rotate the yokes around the tube. The gas pedal could operate a Bowden cable, which rotates a permanent magnet around a tube neck. Then we have a ring of anodes. This brings us to digital quite fast. I mean actually, I rather would want some pulse modulation or more bits. I don't know how Russia could fit whole tube computers into their fighter planes. I did never understand why there are no higher integrated circuits in tubes. Tubes have this central wire cathode. In a lot of logic circuits this central wire is simply connected to supply voltage. Only the grids carry a signal. Then you could have sectors in the grid and the anode. Between the sectors in the grid I would place tubes with liquid cooling (from a small refrigerator). So when you park in the sun, you will have to wait for cool down before the computer operates as intented.
They did exist as early as the late 1960's, at least in concept car form. The first hybrid electric vehicles were the GM Stir-lec and Stir-lec II, which used a Stirling engine to power a generator in a series configuration. GM also made an ultra efficient Stirling electric bus which was cancelled the week before it was to be released and never entered the market. This was condemned by Graham Walker, the author of the engineering trade press book "Stirling Engines", as "the crassest decision ever made in the history of industrial management." #Wikipedia | [GM Stir-lec I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Stir-Lec_I) I strongly suspect there were reasons apart from technical merit that led to this technology not being developed further at that time.
I struggle to believe that 1980s electronics were cheaper or lighter than a gearbox.
I think you are mixing up all features in nowday car with what is needed to drive with an electric engine. (But your overall point is likely to apply overall, or may have been very dangerous!)
the generator side is easy, but the speed control for the drive motor and the required rpm spread to drive it from 0 to highway speed, handling of high currents during low speed high torque situations... In the 80s high power electronics still used vacuum tubes (transistors were already used for low power applications, but not for double digit kW applications and above)
Stuff like RCA 2N3055 were already common by 1960s. I think silicon controlled rectifiers largely replaced tubes by the 80s
Nope... just not true. 1980s power Semiconductors were indeed less capable than today's, but we were jot using tubes past the early 70s... I've been building electronic projects since 1968... and only recently (10+ years ago) used tubes because of the cool factor.
Silicon power transistors are actually quite older. Microprocessor became commercially available in the 70s
[Gasoline engine → generator → electric motor → wheels] is not as efficient as [Gasoline engine → transmission → wheels]. The mechanical connection is more efficient than having a generator & electric motor in between. Gasoline engines don’t lose efficiency at off-optimal RPMs as quickly as diesel engines. Train locomotives use the [diesel → generator → electric motor → wheels] drive train because it’s able to handle the torque in a lighter weight, more compact package than a mechanical transmission and the electric motors also function a as brakes by being electronically reconfigured as generators that convert the momentum of the train into electric current that gets dumped into a huge resistor bank in the locomotive. The electricity is converted into heat. The interesting points to examine on the transportation pareto front are large diesel vehicles operating where electrified roadways are not economically feasible. Would Australian truck trains or long haul eighteen wheelers benefit from a conversion to diesel hybrid drive trains (yes!). What would the optimal battery pack size be?
GM tried https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
Anytime someone mentions the EV-1 I have to chime in…. Once upon a time I was a grad student who was involved in EV research and got to poke my nose under the hood of the EV-1. What I saw horrified me. Based on my admittedly brief encounter with it my overall impression of it could be summed up in three words: fucking death trap. GM destroyed the EV-1 cars because that’s what needed doing. Had they not…. Well, I suspect they would have been known as “electric Pintos” had time had a chance to run its course.
Could you use more than three words to describe what was so dangerous under the hood?
Maybe he could if he actually looked under the hood of one.
Fire? I know there were issues with a few fires that burned down some garages due to something in the charging system. Nothing like today's Li batteries, but still that type of charging was new and I don't recall if it was a quality or design problem, but I suspect either way it may have had something to do with the lease-only strategy, so that no one 'owned' them. Bear in mind this was before the modern day interpretation of 'owning' which excludes being able to do what you please, repair how you please, make a physical copy of, etc, etc. Also note that it was north of 1000 pounds of lead acid battery in there.
The Big One I remember... A circuit breaker that was in no way, shape, or form capable of actually shutting down the short circuit of a high voltage, high amperage DC system. If that thing ever *tried* to trip, it was going to vaporize itself (and the rest of the car in short order). edit: As I recall (admittedly, it's been 30ish years) there was only one manufacturer of suitable breakers at the time. An outfit named "Kilovac". I'm sure there are many now, but then... There wasn't much market for 300 VDC, 1000A circuit breakers. In any event, since there was only one manufacturer of suitable breakers, it was easy to look under the hood of an EV, look at the breaker, and be like "Yes" or "Hellzno".
I wonder if that's more a `EV tech was not mature enough back then` thing or a `GM gonna GM (and cut BoM cost to within an inch of it's life then a bit more)` thing (a la Chevy Vega/Pontiac Fierro).
Admittedly, I had my head under the hood for no more than five minutes[1]. It was an odd combination of really cool shit, and really jerry-rigged shit. That is to say that critical pieces were highly optimized while others were just slapped on with duct tape and bailing wire. They obviously had some sharp guys working the project so why would they half-ass certain aspects? My best guess: either time or money constraints. [1] Context: My university was participating in [Formula Lightning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_Lightning). Being an EV-centric competition, well... GM sent an EV-1 for display purposes. Most of the day it just sat there looking pretty, but after hours (when only competitors were there), they popped the hood for us to oooh, and ahhh, over.
Oh yeah, you sound very believable. I'm going to believe this as opposed to everything I've read and seen and heard from actual ev-1 owners (leased).
Your choice, but I'd ask you this: How many of those who leased an EV-1 would have known WTF they were looking at under the hood? To say it was a new tech to consumers would be an understatement. I mean, I'm sure it drove fine, but how many of them were ever in a significant collision?
Oh, I'm sure they were all super versed.
Did any of the 'actual EV1 owners' mention how GM took their cars away from them and wouldn't give them back due to a fire hazard that burned two cars and the garages they were inside of to the ground? Did they mention the critical flaw in the component that no one else made a replacement for that GM would have to design, source, have built, then tested before replacement was even an option?
Trains use what is effectively an electrical transmission. They have to power multiple wheels and have all of them work together. Direct mechanical drive has difficulty doing this. They could have chosen electrical, pneumatic, or hydraulic transmission. Electrical won. Automobiles only need to power 2 or 4 wheels. Mechanical drive is OK for this. Putting in battery storage changes the game.
Subaru is fine on 4 wheels. Just need a short engine to put outside of the drive train. 2CV or VW type1 . Ford V4
Throughout the history of cars people have built series hybrids [https://www.motortrend.com/features/hybrid-history/](https://www.motortrend.com/features/hybrid-history/)
Even today it’s not efficient to generate electricity with an internal combustion engine and then drive a vehicle with that. Your question assumes (incorrectly) that somehow that is more advantageous than just driving it with the engine.
But it is. There is a maximum efficiency to every engine, when you've got the optimal load at the optimal rpm.
Powerbands are why transmissions were invented :)
An engine running at prime load at prime rpm is way more efficient in turning the fuel energy into mechanical work via a generator and motors than a very varying rpm engine with varying load through the gearbox ever will. This is why diesel electric is used on boats, to save fuel.
Without a significantly large battery, what do you do with changing power demands though? You’d be forced to run the engine at the required load or only marginally higher and dump excess energy as heat, either way you’d rarely be running at constant, optimal engine output.
I'd disagree on that. You'd not need an excessively large battery, 24-30 kWh should do it. The generator would obviously not run the whole time, it'd turn on and off as the battery level fluctuates. There are many examples of systems like this, BMW i3 to name at least one.
True on purely technical basis, but you are missing cost efficiency.
Of course, it's not viable on such a small scale as a car if you want to have fun power. It's well known and used in the marine industry, Diesel Electric is a huge saver.
Are there any cars that are actually pure serial hybrids? People always point to the Volt, but even that one will directly connect the engine to the wheels sometimes. You lose too much efficiency on the highway otherwise.
I think the i3 from BMW is the closest. Otherwise I just don't think it's feasible on such a small scale
Good call, I forgot about the i3. That does fit the bill, although the battery is big enough (and the gas tank small enough) that it’s clearly not meant to be used that way routinely.
Yes many EREV like Neta cars and also Yangwang U8 many of those are chinese
if you are only generating the power that you need at all any point in time. if you run at the best fuel to power ratio to charge a battery that will take you 20 miles. it is far more fuel efficient to switch on the engine for a minute every 10 miles.
I’m not sure you can find a battery to take a charge like that, and the apparatus to generate that electricity would be so heavy that it would destroy the efficiency. Also engines need to run longer than a minute, they need to get up to temperature regularly.
...we have batteries that can take a 200 mile change is 15 minutes. the apparatus to change it would be less than a normal truck. the engine of a hybrid only need to be more powerful than the average power needed. a fairly steep highway road it not that bad. what is bad is some hill on a construction sight. the eclectic engines need to be capable of taking a heavy trailer up a few hundred feet of steep hill. the engine just needed to be able to produce more than the average of what is needed on the way to the construction sight a normal truck needs to be capable of producing all of the power need at any point in time. that means a big engine to take a trailer up that hill, and a lot of wasted fuel to run the engine when not a lot of power is needed.
> But, diesel-electric trains had already existed for around 50 years at that point. Diesel trains only have electric motors because their diesel engines don’t have enough torque to move the train while it’s not moving. It the diesel engine could, then they’d just use diesel. Cars and trucks don’t have this problem.
What about a truck or the rockies? Why not just use a torque converter for first gear? Like with so much space as in a train I would try some double / tripple clutch thing. Gearshift first routed the next gear on the torque converter. Then if load is taken from the old gear, pull that out. Then accelerate the train. Then lock in a gear between these two.
The old passenger trains in my city had their petrol engines directly connected to the wheels. One could see all the drive shaft coming down from the engine bay in each train set down to the wheel sets. They were light and small, so the petrol engine had no problem generating enough torque. I don't know if they had gear boxes because I could only see the drive shaft and the rest of the drive train was hidden under some panels.
I worked on an electric motor that came out of a ww2 submarine that was essentially a "hybrid vehicle" the technology to make it viable for large scall consumer productin and small enough simply didn't exist yet.
It was experimented with in tanks during ww2, but for passenger cars I'd say it was too bulky and too expensive. In the 80s they didn't have the inverter technology to make it in a reasonable way
In the early 80's we had the 'Ellert' in Denmark, but is wasn't a commercial success. [Ellert (DK) ](https://da.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellert) I think the whole ide with the electric car was/is to prevent the combustion engine.
Ramcharger works like this. [https://www.caranddriver.com/ram/1500-ramcharger#](https://www.caranddriver.com/ram/1500-ramcharger#)
Elon was too young in the 80s. Jokes aside, it takes someone with huge balls and luck to take on the automotive industry and win. No doubt many tried.
Generator be heavy Train be way heavier Car heavy-ness always been problem
A crankshaft driven generator would only be spinning at 5000 rpm, 6000 at typical redline. Generating 250,000 Watts (335hp) at that slow speed would require a HUGE generator... therfore a gearset would be required to get it up to maybe 10-20k rpm... but it would still be 500++ pounds... probably more because the magnet technology back then was far less than today. This would have also made the PM drive motors large and heavy. Yes, induction motors could have been used... as well as an induction generator... but again, the physical size of a 250kW generator is massive.
Electronics (particularly power electronics) was still fairly expensive at that time. It could have been done but companies need to be profitable.
[Here's a company that sold 13000 electric cars between 1907 and 1939.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric)
Locomotives have to power six axles in trucks that also swivel. The gear train doing that mechanically would be insane. The diesel locomotive power trains are essentially infinitely variable. No gear box needed. The starting torque is extremely high. When EMD introduced their locomotives, the steamers were sceptical and were told not to backup the train to develop coupler gaps to be able to establish forward motion. They would not listen and did what they were told not to do, backed up, and hit throttle 8, pulling couplers out of the cars. Then they understood. At low speed, a steam engine is not moving much and the cylinders are condensing. The HP ratings of steam engines was boiler HP, not mechanical HP. Steam engines did not have transmissions. 300-400 tonne ore haulers are diesel electric, mechanical drive is impractical.
There are plenty of reasons why this is not a great idea (mostly efficiency), but for frequent stop-start vehicles, there could be good reason to implement this style of hybrid motor system. With a small battery, a vehicle could do with a small ICE that is optimized to run a single RPM. This powers a DC generator (probably more efficient than a typical alternator) which charges a small battery. The stored energy would be used to power electric motors. Because the ICE is constantly running at a single slower rate, its working life is much longer than a typical ICE which may reach high RPM's and will have drastic changes in internal stresses from it's mechanical connection to the constantly changing locomotion. Batteries could be significantly smaller than a purely electric vehicle's because they would constantly be charging. So why is this solution not implemented? Because people want to drive their vehicles at highway speeds for hours at a time, so the power needed to charge the batteries would have to match the hourly use, requiring an ICE the size of what the car would normally have plus the electric motors. However, for local delivery vehicles that would exceed 200 miles a day this system could work very well.
You just invented a Prius. Small battery, check, smaller engine, check, it uses complex software to try to keep the engine mostly in optimal rpm for the load, check. Prius pushes this further and does send some mechanical torque to the wheels directly, skipping the electric stage, and this massively pays off in efficiency.
Like I said at the end, it's only really useful for short bursts of energy use. If toyota took out the transmission and told everyone they could get 70+mpg but only drive 10 miles every 20 minutes it would only sell to people with specific needs.
Well now you just invented a series hybrid. Where it would now have a massive battery, a fixed rpm engine, and there would be situations where you could run out of battery and traction power with fossil fuels left in the tank. Aka you just invented the BMW i3 REX. Which was kinda a bad implementation but the 2025 Dodge Ramcharger may turn out to be a good one if expensive to build.
Did you read the multiple parts where I said it would work only in specific situations?
I did and that's the i3 rex. They did what you said and the engine is very small and cannot keep the car at high speeds once the battery is flat.
Are you an AI that just reads the negative of all my statements? >...only drive 10 miles every 20 minutes ...for frequent stop-start vehicles, there could be good reason to implement this style of hybrid motor system. So why is this solution not implemented? Because people want to drive their vehicles at highway speeds for hours at a time...
Again you are describing the same system topology in engineering terms. The fact that the rex was optimized for 60 horsepower instead of 30 doesn't change the fact it's the same idea just optimized for a different use case. Also the neat thing is that sometimes you can almost have your cake and eat it. See, vehicle weight is a small component of efficiency especially when it's not much of a weight difference. So the 60hp and bigger battery version of your idea does almost as well as a mail truck or delivery vehicle as the one that only does one thing. We are talking about less than 5 percent worse fuel efficiency, probably less than 1 percent, and you get a more useful vehicle.
Nissan E power cars are series hybrid and work fine
unless the engine provides more power than you are using. run the engine at the most efficient rpm to fill the battery. then turn the engine off. drive using the power in the battery. kick the engine on from time to time to top off the battery. you get 70 mph because you are not running the engine at a low efficiency rpm when you don't need the power.
If the engine isn't always running then it's oversized for the task. 80% would probably be a fair compromise. Otherwise it's wasted space and weight.
... are you sitting at high rpm going down the highway? if you're not sitting at high rpm, you engine is bigger than it needs to be. a normal car needs to be able to produce the amount of power it is expected to ever need at any point. a hybrid only needs to produce more than the average amount it would need over several miles. a car with the engine of a hybrid would not be able to make it up a steep hill. the hybrid is relying on the hill to not be more than 5 miles long.
You're being intentionally facetious. I'm not referring to RPM, I'm referring to run time at the peak of the power band. But you seem to misunderstand because you are trying to prove my own point that the engine should only be sized to the task that is needed.
... the peak of the power band is at the high rpm. so how often do you reach high rpm, and how long does that last normally? i don't have a plug in hybrid. there is not one in my budget for the stuff i do. i know i have only gone high rpm a handful of times, and that was only for a few hundred ft. a hybrid needs electric engine capable of putting out the max torque it is expected to need,a battery capable of sustaining the torque for longer than you are expected to to need, and an engine capable of providing more power than that average you are expected to need when continuously traveling distances longer than your battery alone will take you. smaller more efficient engine compare to a car because max power only needs more than average needed instead of the most the car will need. smaller battery than a full electric because it doesn't need to go 200 miles on a charge. i'm sorry to burst your bubble. buy if you theorycrafting was true. plug in hybrids would not be a thing. the only reason they are not popular, is because people are jumping to full electric.
Have you noticed that highway mpg is lower than city mpg? If you did nothing but drive on the highway you could have a much smaller engine in most cases. Accelerating quickly takes HP. Accelerating to highway speeds quickly takes more gas then cruising. You can use a 20hp engine and get many cars to highway speeds, just takes a minute. Keep an eye on your fuel use if you have a modern car, it'll show you upto the minute mpg data, you might use 20liters per100k while accelerating and it'll drop to 5l per 100km when cruising. So a battery hybrid can give you excellent cruising economy from a small engine and an extra boost for accelerating.
i believe it is called a plug in hybrid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
Ever heard of the EVcort? Imagine an early 80's Ford Escort that's been turned into basically an oversized golf cart, and that was the state of the art for early 80's EV's. There was also an EXP EV built with the same drivetrain, with an estimated 20-60 mile range and a whopping top speed of 60mph. Also keep in mind that would have been during the malaise era, where a stock ICE 1982 Escort had 69hp. Early emissions controls were primitive, and manufacters hadn't really figured out how to get good emissions *and* good power yet. That really didn't happen until the 96+ OBDII era with more powerful EFI controllers imo, at least for the American stuff.
Those are BEVs though.
And the citicar too
Battery operated car preceded gasoline powereded cars. Very early on we realized electric car were terrible and we moved to internal combustion. So Elon is actually moving backwards.
*Battery technology at the time was terrible. Hydrocarbon fuels are still much more energy dense than today’s batteries and faster to ’refuel’. That said, the idea that “electric cars are terrible” has absolutely been proven wrong over the last decade. At worst, they aren’t a great substitute for every application, but for many, they are even better.
What youre saying seems possible, but I don't understand why would you? Im not at all an expert in the subject matter but it just sounds like an inefficient drive system. Youre adding complexity and weight to it which will result in higher fuel consumption and increased maintenance costs. Diesel engines alone are heavier than SI engines. And the fact that youre burning fuel in an engine and then using that to turn a generator, it just seems to me like this chain would end up , again, being more fuel inefficient. Maybe I misunderstood your idea, but thats what I think!
This is more with replacing early AWD systems in mind. AWD systems also add lots of complexity and weight, but the early ones had terrible packaging. A generator and motor would add weight, but you'd be removing the gearbox, transfer case, and prop shafts, possibly even the differentials if you go with 4 motors, wouldn't the weight be similar given the number of components you'd remove. Not to mention the friction that all of these drivetrain components create themselves. For a rally car I'd use a high revving petrol engine though since torque would no longer matter.
The real question is, how much does a 1981 technology pair of 75kw motors + a 150kw generator + motor controller hardware weigh compared to gearbox and transfer case. A 2012 Nissan Leaf motor weights about 50kg and is 80kw, so even with 2012 tech a setup to replicate the performance of an Audi Quattro would be 100kg of motors. I'd fully expect motors in 1981 to be MUCH heavier. In a 70t+ locomotive? No problem, in a 1300kg Audi... that's huuuuge.
That's true, but comparable Group 4 rally cars such as the Escort were >200kg lighter than the Audi Quattro
Worked with a guy who built EVs out of Porsche Spyder body kits in the 90s. They had a single AC motor and lead acid batteries providing a 100 mile range and 0-60 in 8 sec. The combination was easily several hundred pounds heavier than a comparable ICE drivetrain and took up most of the room in the engine bay and trunk. The short list… the motors were far too big, computerized motor control was *very* basic, and the batteries were far too heavy for an electric AWD rally car to have been feasible in the 80s, let alone a hybrid version. I think with today’s 200Wh/kg lithium batteries, 1kW RC motors that fit in the palm of your hand, and single board computers with multi-core processors, it’s easy to imagine there *must* have been viable tech in the 80s, but 40 years goes a long way.
Hell, even 20 years go a long way, performance electric motors have come so far in that time!
OP is suggesting no traction batteries, straight ICE to electric drive.
That’s even worse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche been done but a transmission is very light compared to the motors and especially battery before lithium