Here's how the electromechanical flywheel hybrid system was installed in the 2010 version of the +Porsche 911 GT3R Hybrid. The version in the new +Audi USA R18 e-tron quattro is about half the size and weight.
In album 911 hybrid (91 photos)
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In the week following the 12 Hours of Sebring, +Audi USA and +Highcroft Racing stuck around the Florida race track to work on preparing their mounts for 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.
While Highcroft will only be running the +Nissan DeltaWing in France, Audi will be running the full World Endurance Championship schedule with both the R18 TDI Ultra (turbodiesel) and the hybrid R18 e-tron Quattro.
The e-tron uses an electro-mechanical flywheel system to recapture energy under braking and then feed it back to the front wheels through electric motors while accelerating. The flywheel system has been in development for several years now and was originally created by the Williams F1 team.
+Porsche licensed it from Williams in 2010 and continued development in the 911 GT3R hybrid in 2010-11. When Porsche first installed the 40,000 rpm system in the 911 in 2010, it added about 100 pounds to the car. The revised version used in 2011 cut that mass to about 70 pounds and the unit in the R18 is now down to about 50 pounds.
When I first talked to Porsche engineers about the flywheel system (http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/hybrids/porsche-911-gt3r-hybrid-flywheel) they indicated that it probably wouldn't show up in a production 911 anytime soon but they said they were making the flywheel unit smaller and lighter. The original version sat where the passenger seat normally goes in a 911. Porsche hinted at the possibility of a future version of the 911 Cup cars with smaller unit mounted behind the seats where the vestigial back seat normally goes. It sounds like they have achieved their goal of shrinking the flywheel and I wouldn't be surprised to see a hybrid Porsche Cup car in 2013.
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The topic of discussion on +Up with Chris Hayes this morning is atheism. Among the guests are Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins. While I generally agree with Dawkins, one of the things he said was that "science has earned a measure of trust" while discussing climate change and evolution.
The problem is that while the general of concept of trust in science certainly applies when it comes to pure science that is done for the purpose of gaining knowledge, much of the science that we see today is done within the context of business.
In almost all areas of human endeavor, money has a corrupting influence on science. One of the basic tenets of science is that you should always be skeptical and keep testing theories in an attempt to disprove them. A fundamental component of the scientific method is that nothing can ever be proven absolutely true. The more a theory is tested and survives, the more likely it is to be true. When theories are tested all the data should be released and peer reviewed whether it supports or negates the hypothesis so that everyone can learn from it.
When business participates in science, much of the data ends up being suppressed, especially the negative data. Tests are formulated in ways that support the data. This is often particularly true in the pharmaceutical industry but it also occurs in many businesses. This is why we get drugs coming out that can have little or no real benefit or others that actually cause more harm than good.
It's critical that we always remain skeptical whether something is couched in religion or science.
Question Everything Always!
#upwithchrishayes #science #skepticism
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Cool training film produced by Bell Labs in 1951 designed to teach people how to make long distance phone calls by direct dialing with an area code, something that was still a new concept at the time. Interestingly, Bell thought that a mere 80 area codes would be sufficient to cover the United States and Canada.
There is some interesting stuff in there about the history of the phone system and how it all began with manual switching and gradually evolved to automatic systems by the 1950s. It's pretty amazing that they were able to make all this stuff work at all in pre-computer days.
via TechnoBuffalo http://www.technobuffalo.com/technobuffalo/flashback-friday/flashback-friday-the-nation-at-your-fingertips/
#technology #phones
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Matt Jones live at #gbsdetroit
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#gbsdegroit
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The Wankel is an amazingly brilliant design concept that produces a very power dense propulsion system. Every full rotation of the eccentric shaft provides 3 complete ignition cycles per rotor. A four stroke piston engine generates one power cycle for every two rotations per piston.
The week link in the Wankel has always been the apex seals (at the corners of the rotors) and fuel consumption. However, the idea is making something of a come-back now as engineers investigate small rotaries as range extenders for electric vehicles like the Volt.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/industry/5-alternative-engine-architectures#slide5
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Wankel.
Not as clumsy or random as a piston engine.
A more elegant design, for a civilized age.
For over three decades they were the guardians of peace and justice in the old garage.
Before the dark times. Before apex seal failures.
They betrayed and murdered your father.
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This week my friend +Alex Nunez got a chance to drive its successors, the new 2013 Ford Police Interceptors in sedan and utility form and he was impressed.
#ford #fordpoliceinterceptor
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Drove the new Ford Police Interceptors for +ConsumerSearch this week. They are very, very good.
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Driving the 2013 Ford Police Interceptors
When it retired the venerated Panther rear-wheel drive platform last year, Ford lost more than the beloved Lincoln Town Car. Panther underpinned the Ford Crown Victoria, which, while discontinued for …
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Amazon data center architect James Hamilton has serious doubts about the wisdom of building a solar power farm to provide electricity for Apple's North Carolina data center.
While solar is great for many applications, a data center needs a lot of power and solar is not particularly space efficient. Hamilton estimates that the 171 acre farm that Apple is installing will only provide about 4% of the power needs of the servers at best.
The work that companies like Facebook and Google are doing to design more efficient data centers will probably have a lot more impact than a solar farm that displaces hundreds of acres of forest.
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Perspectives – I Love Solar Power But…
I love solar power, but in reflecting carefully on a couple of high profile datacenter deployments of solar power, I'm really developing serious reservations that this is the path to reducing data…
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This shot really highlights how different +Highcroft Racing's new DeltaWing is from more traditional prototypes like the Audi R18.
Audi and Highcroft both stuck around Sebring this week for more testing after the 12 Hour last Saturday.
#highcroftracing #sebring #lemans #deltawing #audir18
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In album Sebring Nissan DeltaWing testing
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