Posts Tagged ‘hybrid’
Porsche revs up 911 hybrid
February 11th, 2010 | 
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Artist’s rendering of the Porsche GT3 R Hybrid.
(Credit: Porsche)
It’ll be fast, and it’ll be green.
High-performance automaker Porsche plans to unveil a hybrid version of its 911 GT3 R race car at the Geneva Motor Show in March–and then enter it in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring race this May.
Curious about how Porsche plans to get Porsche-like performance out of a green machine? To pique your interest, the company on Thursday issued a press release explaining roughly how the gas-electric hybrid system will work, and showing off some artist’s renderings of the car.
In addition to a 480-bhp 4-liter engine powering the rear axle, the race car will have two electric motors for the front axle, each one capable of delivering 60kW to the two front wheels. But instead of powering the electric motors with heavy batteries that might weigh down or upset the balance of a race car, the 911 GT3 R Hybrid will have an electric flywheel power generator.
When the driver applies the brakes, the two electric front axle motors act as generators, and the flywheel generator stores energy from braking. The driver can then use the power from the flywheel generator for a burst of power lasting 6 to 8 seconds, presumably to overtake another car or to accelerate out of a bend.
Even with the entry in the Nurburgring event, Porsche is under no pretense that the hybrid sports car will actually be competitive.
“The focus is not on the 911 GT3 R Hybrid winning the race, but rather serving as a spearhead in technology and a ‘racing laboratory’ providing know-how on the subsequent use of hybrid technology in road-going sports cars,” Porsche said in a statement.
The Porsche news follows Ferrari’s announcement in January that it will be unveiling a hybrid version of the Ferrari 599 GTB at the Geneva auto show.
The 911 GT3 R that Porsche unveiled in January 2010 will be the basis for its hybrid race car.
(Credit: Porsche)
This artist’s rendering shows the placement of the electrical flywheel battery.
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Ford charges electric, hybrid strategy
BOSTON–Ford Motor expects to manufacture as many as 2 million all-electric and gas-electric vehicles in the next 10 years, betting that rising oil prices and consumer interest will sustain a long-term transition to new technologies.
The company has set a goal of making 10 percent to 25 percent of its fleet “electrified” by 2020, which represents somewhere between 800,000 and 2 million cars, said Nancy Gioia at a media event here on Wednesday. Ford announced on Wednesday that Gioia will hold a newly created position of director of global electrification, which covers hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles.
Plug-in electric vehicles promise to offer a much lower cost-per-mile than gasoline cars and deliver substantial environmental benefits. But in the near term, hybrids will likely represent the largest volume in the mix of technologies, said Gioia at the event.
“We’ve finally demonstrated the technology, the life, the durability, the safety (of hybrids)–all of that has reached a comfort zone to make it viable. Now it’s going to be affordability that will drive mass market adoption,” she said.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10375326-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
New hybrids proclaim their German engineering
I’m a big fan of “German engineering”–that combined focus on power and precision that distinguishes the better automobiles designed or manufactured in Germany.
At Frankfurt’s International Motor Show, BMW will be showing off two new hybrid cars intended to deliver the full promise of German engineering. This is no small thing because most hybrid cars to date have been lightly built and somewhat underpowered in order to improve fuel economy.
The two new BMWs are more like previous offerings from that company: big, solid cars with lots of power to maintain performance in spite of the weight. They’re also real cars, not just prototypes.
Fortunately, I don’t need to describe these new cars here; there’s a great article by Antuan Goodwin over on CNET’s Car Tech blog that does a fine job of that (see “BMW unveiling two big hybrid models at Frankfurt“). What I would like to do instead is to drill down into their respective powertrains, which represent two different solutions to high-performance hybrid design, using images provided by BMW.
The ActiveHybrid X6, due to go on sale in the U.S. later this year, represents one end of the spectrum: higher-power electric motors and a larger battery pack. As the first image shows, the new X6 model has a twin-turbo V8 gas engine with 400 horsepower. Though this is a reasonably efficient engine for its size, it certainly wasn’t chosen primarily for its fuel economy.
BMW’s ActiveHybrid X6 uses a large NiMH battery pack and a new transmission with two integrated electric motors to augment its 400-horsepower gasoline engine.
