Electric Car Recharging

You can't do that because... because.... aaaggghhhhh!!!!

That was tried once, but it didn't work very well. When coasting downhill with the brakes lightly applied the car overcharged itself and exploded, killing the inventor and destroying all his drawings and documentation.

The feat has never been duplicated.

I hear that LynDoor™Industries is working on a prototype that charges itself whenever the occupants pass gas.

LynDoor™ Energies is also working on another secret project. This one captures and saves the exhaust from the diesel genny on a locomotive. When the engine and train runs down an incline the exhaust is converted back into diesel. We accept the heat as lost, but we are still expecting a 50% reduction in diesel use when this system is functional.

We are having a little trouble with a few details, but expect to have it in our catalog within ten years. It will not operate correctly in the northern hemisphere. Ever.

Doorman,

I didn't even know about that one.

Wow, that LynDoor™ what a company. I hear they have a killer research center in Hawaii.

If your communication is no better than that, your folie à deux conglomerate will soon fall apart....

It's a new concept we're working on.

We call it "synergistic complimentary isolationism" whereby we each take basic concepts and develop them together while apart. Thus diesel fumes and farts both accomplish the same end through different paths.

Why bother with plugging anything into the mains when extension leads with more than one socket are available? - Simply plug the plug of the extension lead into one of the sockets on it and the appliance into one of the others.

Adding a generator connected to the electric motor(s) of an electric vehicle to charge up the batteries powering the electric motor(s) would require the electric motor(s) to have to work harder to overcome the generator load (as the generator provides more power the generator becomes harder to turn).

Put simply the batteries would always discharge faster if a generator was added in this way.

Regenerative braking is a special case because it doesn't matter that the generator would slow the vehicle because the car is slowing down already. You are converting wasted energy in the form of heat in the brake pads/discs to electrical energy that can be used to charge up the batteries.

Regenerative braking may not sound like much for highway driving where little braking is done, but just think about how much braking you do in the city (stop/start traffic, traffic lights, etc) on an average outing.

The perpetual motion machine, build it and you shall have riches beyond measure.

Some hybrids do recharge while running, but they burn fuel to do so. There is no perpetual motion, over unity, or "free lunch" in this; but you can get some fuel economy sort of like a "reduced-price" lunch.

Why is this , when the car is moving forward or backwards most of the time

current vehicles use friction to slow and stop the vehicle turning the vehicles motion and energy into heat thus the energy it took to get the vehicle moving is lost

Regenerative braking as used on fork lift trucks turns the drive motor into a generator so when you brake the power that got the vehicle moving is used to generate power which can be used to top up the batteries while slowing down

Would it not be better to design a car that charges its self while driving and not braking then most of the time the car would not have to be plugged into the house ?

How? Surely you can see this would defeat the whole purpose of having the electric vehicle

you could use a hybrid ie a small generator to charge the batteries while you drive but in order to completely over come the energy used in driving the vehicle say up hills the generator would be as big as a normal engine which would defeat the whole idea of having an electric car.

I know someone that needs to pay more attention to thermodynamics this semester.

Ha ha! Great pictorial demonstration of the idiocy of the concept of over-unity energy generation!

GA from me.

There is one flaw with that design in your picture that will prevent that from working.

The AC switch is off.

So, do you get different power levels, depending which tap you plug in to?

OK folks.

I maybe again bending too far over backwards but I think that the OP is missing a crucial point here, hence the question. Cut the guy/gal some slack.

A hybrid vehicle charges the battery during braking so that the kinetic energy of moving at a faster velocity does not get completely lost to heating a set of disc or drum brakes. To accomplish this the battery cannot be fully charged before braking or the energy has nowhere to go to be stored. Now sometimes a battery may fully charge before the vehicle comes to rest (going downhill) and sometimes the rate of braking needed exceeds the charging rate of the battery, so there must always also be an energy wasting traditional braking system. Additionally, sometimes a battery will get so deeply depleted in an acceleration that a slow charge maybe applied to bring a partial charge to the battery while the vehicle is cruising, but nowhere near a full charge for the above reason.