If you had an electric car, could you use wind power on the car to charge the battery?

I imagine it would use more power than it creates but it seems to me if you put several small wind turbines around the vehicle you could power the car while it drives just from wind allowing the vehicle to go much further before needing to charging up again. I think they also do this when putting the breaks on. Would the small turbines create too much drag or could this work?

You can use wind or solar to increase your mileage.

http://www.yachting-greece.com/Sailing-Yachts/Catamaran/Lagoon_420_Hybrid.html

http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/

Energy cannot be created from nothing. The amount of energy created from wind turbines would not be more than the energy lost due to air friction or drag unless you were coasting downhill. I believe the relationship between speed and drag is a square relationship. That is, if you doubled your speed, you increase drag by a factor of four.

If you plugged your electric car into a power grid fueled by wind turbines and solar cells, you're likely better off that way. Of course, our power grid is largely sustained by fossil fuels.

Well..sorta

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/electronics/q0044c.shtml

In the event that all engines go off line (or run out of fuel), this turbine drops down and recovers energy from the flight to power the electrical systems.

This was done a few years back when an airbus ran out of fuel at altitude. The turbine provided power as the huge airliner glided safely to a runway.

In a car? Well you COULD do the same, but the efficiancys are not there and of course, you could never power a car by that exclusively (see perpetual motion machine)

The amount of energy recoverable would proably be very small, and would only be a net benefit when the car is slowing down or coasting. During cruise and acceleration, the drag would be a net decrease in efficiency. Therefore to make it feasable, you would have to have a mechnism to feather the blades during acceleration and cruise...all in all it becomes quite complicated(expensive) and not that effective.

If, say, you had a little windmill on the roof, you would lose more energy pushing that through the air than it would generate.

If you parked the car and went to work, on the other hand, you could extend some sort of turbine that would charge the battery up. They make little parachute-spun trickle chargers for boats.

Solar would charge the battery constantly, or at least reduce the battery draw, but you don't get much from solar cells that fit on a car. Only a few watts.

Hybrids like the Prius already have regenerative braking, where the car's forward energy is partially turned back into electricity and pumped into the battery.

or as was said above - no free lunch.
The energy from the battery is converted into vehicle motion in a process that is less than 100% efficient. Much less, actually.
The rat, the air turbines would convert the car's motion to energy, again at less than 100% efficiency.
By the time the current reaches the battery, there is very little left of what went out.
You're better off carrying a slightly bigger battery.
But the idea does have an application.
If you face a long downhill run a turbine charging the battery comes out ahead. Slowing by drag will also spare the brakes.
One can imagine renting a trailer at the summit of the rockies with a large brake turbine/generator and charger coupling for the long ride down.

need to expend energy getting the turbine back to the summit of the rockies, again at a net loss!

So, every time you are going down a steep hill you push a button and the turbines come out and start capturing energy. You are not even pressing on the gas so it's pure free energy. Then when you start going up a hill they fold up and go back into the car.

Seems to me that would give you some extra charging for free. You would be using the energy of gravity to charge your vehicle when possible. Of course it would take some energy moving the turbines up and down.

required to move the weight of the turbines when not in use and merely stored inside the car.

That extra mass takes additional energy to move them. It would be somewhat like always driving with lead weights in the back seat.

In essence that is how the regenerative braking systems work with the exception that those are essential systems both for driving the wheels and in assisting in the braking process. Since they are essential and the weight is going to be aboard the vehicle anyway utilizing them for both motive and generative functions does not put a new burden of weight on the vehicle.

like a solar fired ski lift that would pull the fans to the top of the mountain again.
Unless you had ultra light weight equipment and a lot of internal space you wouldnt want to haul the object around all the time.
Glad to see you guys are on the ball.

but this got sidetracked into a batmobile discussion somehow!

I like the the V-16 limo from the 40s serial the best, followed by the Batman Begins vehicle and old faithful, the 66 batman Lincoln conversion.
The '89 batmobile looked cool but the J-57 is a bit much.

When I was a kid....had an attachment on the front tire on my bike that charged and lit the front and rear ights. Was pretty cool riding at night with them lit. I think the 4 spinning wheels could have energy captured and used within the engine. (heck I'm no engineer...but it seems logical to me)

and hence the generator. No free lunch.

losses plus losses equals more losses. In other words you can't get here from there. ;-)

the car's direction.

To the extent you had wind at night sufficient to spin the thing.

A "hybrid" automobile like the Prius is currently as good as it gets. Trying to do the same thing with wind turbines would be far less efficient due to aerodynamic drag, which would be considerable.

but that really would`t be practical. solar or wind for recharge

When the battery runs down the bio-diesel engine starts to charge the batteries...There is your almost free lunch.

We need to move away from monolithic energy production to micro-local energy production.

Every house that can have, should have wind and solar power. Our cars should be an extension of that house.

Our house charges our car.

Trouble is power, oil and car companies don't like that idea. Dips into profits and those big exec salaries.

I think a lot of people got hung up on alternative energy as it was in 1978 the last time it was trendy for them. One of the sell points for the solar car in the 70s was that the panels charged it while driving. But those panels weren't enough for constant operation without a recharge. Still people got the impression that it made energy as you went.

The fact is that our cars are not in constant use like taxi cabs. Solar can help lengthen the battery life. Most miles are driven while the sun is out but in the morning and evening rush hours. Peak sun is 11-2 when people are in their offices. So solar was a possibility.


But you can have a Wind Turbine charge your car at night while you sleep. You can build decent wind turbines out of old alternators from autos.

There is a neighbor of a friend who uses 3-4 small self-made turbines to power his computing cluster at his 3rd floor apartment. That is a 24-7 kind of thing.

Seems to me that charging a car overnight would be easy most anywhere in the world with wind. Remember that you can have the wind turbine at home still making and saving electric power while you are off driving to work. That is how you can use a wind turbine while you are driving,... sort of.

Sail boats are powered by wind while in use. You power your radio and battery while the vehicle is in use. Why is powering a vehicle while driving it so difficult to grasp when we do such with other forms of transportation? They already do charge electric cars while putting on the breaks saving a considerable amount of energy.

The question was about making the vehicle a little more efficient so some energy can be saved. It has nothing to do with what the best time to fuel your vehicle is.

I am thinking of the amount of air that is pulled like a vacuum at the back of the car. That wind is coming around the car and being sucked into an area of low pressure as the car displaces the air. Because that area of low pressure is going to be there regardless couldn't you re-capture some of the energy that was wasted as the air is pulled into the vacuum?

I am picturing two small turbines on the back bumper, one on each corner of the bumper facing out. As the air is pulled around the back of the vehicle into the area of low pressure the turbines would be going nuts. Or would that just drag the car more?

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