130 MPG Car?

That site reeks of huile de serpent.

It is presented in a bollocksy style. But I don't think the idea itself is a problem. It's gets its efficiency from regenerative braking, but doing it hydraulically instead of electrically. He also claims a charge/discharge efficeincy of 70-80% so it's clearly not a perpetual motion machine. Of course it probaly has smaller practical problems that have stopped other people doing the same thing already. It doesn't seem like you could store much energy by squashing an air bladder.

I always wondered why hydraulics weren't used to transfer power from the engine to the wheels... It would certainly allow more "innovative" mounting of the engine, and save some of the space used by driveaxles, etc.

I assume hydraulic motors are larger and/or heavier than would be practical in a vehicle?

I checked out the patent number and it is a valid patent. Of course, I have found lots of valid patents on things that do not now nor never did work. Time will tell, I wish him well.

Regenerative braking is a good idea, but that energy has to be stored as efficiently as possible. Running it through a series of hydraulic pumps to inflate a bladder or other storage container on the face of it does not seem very efficient. I suspect that moving all those pistons and valves will consume quite a bit. There was or is a similar idea from some flake designer in france for running cars from air stored in containers. Supposedly it allowed pollution free propulsion if you ignore the cost of compressing the air and the rather large heavy tanks required to store enough highly compressed air to be useful. The basic problem with air propulsion is that a comparable volume does not pack nearly as much energy as gasoline.

I have visions of the Valentin car being something powered by an oversized whoopee cushion!

Compared to electric motors a smaller lighter hydraulic motor can supply more power.

Not really but you do lose a good percentage of power. You also generate a bunch of heat from all the fluid motion and pumping losses.

The vehicle mentioned above is very common today. Look at a Case garden tractor or many of the zero turns out there. Eliminate the chain final drive and you get the standard hydrostatic drive units.

Metinks a big whoopee cushion would work for me. cuhulin

There is, in fact, a hydraulic motor built into your automatic transmission.

--scott

You mean a hydraulic pump, no?

Dan

It might have something to do with the incredibly low efficiency. Hydraulics are great for multiplying force. They're terrible for transmitting power.

You'd lose 99% of your engine power in the form of fluid friction in the pipes. Unless, of course, you went with 10" diameter lines. Then your problem would be with the extra twenty tons of tubing.

No, I mean the torque converter.

--scott

A good stick shift is an extremely efficient transmission system. No major breakthroughs in alternate transmissions are going to substantially change the fuel efficiency as long as we drive them with throttled variable speed engines. If we remove throttling, we need to go to some sort of hybrid system with energy storage.

The other big thing, of course, is to cut the energy requirement. But since we seem to buy our cars like we buy our meat (best buy in dollars per pound), that is not likely to happen. Bigger and heavier have always been viewed as better :-(

A Married Irish woman lady friend of mine (she is married to that Irish guy) in Bognor Regis, England.A few days ago she got a brand new new company car to drive.Fiat Grande Punto 1.4 liter engine, automatic transmission, she said her new Fiat car has a feature she can shift gears manually if she wants to.Her previous company car was a 2007 Vauxhall Astra Estate car with manual shift transmission and diesel engine.She said the diesel engine is ok, but that stiff manual shift transmission was wearing her are arm out from having to shift gears every fifteen seconds. cuhulin

Lookie here, here's the engine: