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But I don't think the conversion would be as efficient for times like higher speed highway cruising. And motors large enough to make enough HP to make the car entertaining would be big and heavy--torque? That wouldn't be a problem, four 20hp DC motors throuwn wide-open in a light wieght car would probably break your neck off the line. A four wheel, DC electric car burn-out would be cool. The unsprung weight of large hub-mount motors could be a mother.
There are some companies out there who are making some wicked-effeicient generators/invertors, I've heard-talk in the mid/high 90% range from a friend who worked in the business -- so with big enough electricity storage capacity you could fire-up your tiny diesel-engined car at the beginning of the year and just let it idle until it was time to do the next oil change. :) But unless there's some real amazing break-through battery technology you can't do that real efficiently without a lot of waste. Or here's a revolution, you could actually plug into your house and give the house extra power when you're not driving... Anyway,
It sure would be a flexible and bullet-proof drivetrain with potentially 1 moving part not including the wheel/tire. And I bet it would be hard to get stuck. And near instant-response TSC.
Normalizing the load is what needs to be done. To make all DC drive make sense you'd probably end up with a car suited mostly to city driving with an undersized diesel and lots of electricity storage and fairly large electric motors. With the CVT you can avoid the storage problem because you still have a good, normal sized engine, and there's one less energy conversion between the fuel and the road. Regardless, the future does look good for performance and fuel economy.
posted by 67.10.24...
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