And nooo, you really can't power an electric car by the wind it generates as it moves. You can't even keep the batteries charged in this manner. I tried it. Tried really really hard.
Common fan blades out of older Mopar cars and trucks. Welded up to accommodate the cone.
Attached to the fans are alternators, wired to act as generators.
It works pretty good though, drives great! It's just a DC motor out of a forklift mated to the trans. Alternator you see there is for the 12 volt system you still gotta have if you want lights, blinkers, blower, etc. And yes there's a regular 12v battery under the hood still.
Heart of the system right here:
It doesn't work at all for continuous charging however it DOES greatly extend range, time between charges! Batteries weren't the most efficient I could get...
It's worth more study. Maybe if I can ever get hands on a Tesla battery instead of these lead-acid marine batts, and go to AC for the motor instead of DC... There's still thoughts.
Anyhow, what happens is you come to a point of diminishing returns, when the electrical load causes the wind generators to be so hard to turn, they greatly slow down and eventually just lock up even at 60mph. Going up long inclines against the wind is one such time.
But yeah, it doesn't really work. Up in the top of the car at the back, behind the turbines there is a 2kw generator that runs off a typical small engine you might associate with lawn mowers... It kicks on automatically when the buss voltage drops below a certain point. Makes enough juice to charge the batteries in almost all conditions and is VERY miserly on gasoline, I calculated I can get up to 200mpg on the highway just using the generator. (Flat road, no headwind) You get some of the same thing though -- in real world highway driving that generator gets really hard for the motor to turn under certain conditions. Makes the little engine use more fuel and eventually it too will lock up, not having the HP necessary to keep turning. Eventually you're gonna bend a rod.
As it sits and for typical driving, it can go well over 400 miles or better between charges - depending on how lead-footed the driver is, whether he/she jackrabbits it, and so on. But eventually yeah, you do gotta either plug it in or let the small engine generator run on manual while you're stopped, to fully charge the beast.
Would make a great car for some future Road Warrior movie though. I'm done tinkering with it for the forseeable future. Money's too tight right now to be Emmitt Brown anymore.
