An innovative shock absorber could reduce fuel costs by up to 10%
…thanks again to the brainiacs at MIT.
Shakeel Avadhany, the Project Leader, is a senior student in Materials Science at MIT. He and his team have created a shock absorber that can generate electricity from driving over bumps. This enery created is enough to power the alternator in a truck, thereby decreasing the drain on the battery and increasing the fuel efficiency by up to 10%. They seem to have thought of most every angle, including what should happen if the system failed. If that is the case, the shock absorber would go back to being a normal shock.
Right now, the tests have proved all of this based on large vehicles. The first official production will be done for the military, to increase the efficiency of Hummers out in the field.
Shakeel has created his own company looking into this, called Levant Power Corp., and by this summer they will be releasing their first fine tuned version ready for release this summer. Talks will then begin with Wal-Mart, for starters, in which the estimates they could save Wal-Mart up to $13 million a year in fuel costs.
Product Info -MIT Shock Absorbers-
Retrieved from -OhGizmo!-
Can hydrogen really be a feasible car fuel source…
…if it costs so much to produce?
Early yesterday, I read an article in Dvice talking about hydrogen cars being a fraud. Briefly, I will list the points that were made.
1. Hydrogen cars (Honda FCX Clarity) are not for sale, only for lease. Production cost of cars is supposedly in the hundreds of thousands.
2. Hydrogen is not a fuel, but an energy storage medium that is converted back to electricity to power a car.
3. Right now, only oil companies are supplying the hydrogen refilling stations.
When I first read this, it made a lot of sense. Why buy hydrogen that has been produced by electricity to create electricity? Wouldn’t you be better off to just use an electric car?
But then, I read an article that was talking about a cleaner and greener method of producing hydrogen that could really start to make this a smart decision in the future. Gizmodo reported aobut a new of storing solar energy, which essentially breaks up water into hydrogen and oxygen. Once these are broken up, they can be easily stored into a fuel cell to be used as an energy source. This will not use any carbon to provide power and therefore be a big help to the environment. This could really help with points 2 and 3 listed above, since it can start to make more sense. I can’t help point 1, and would hopefully think that the high cost would be due to the research that had to be done, and once people realize that hydrogen can be a viable power source, can start to reduce production costs.
Something to think about for sure!
Retrieved from -Gizmodo-
Retrieved from -Dvice-
Retrieved from -PhysOrg-