SVX M-Car Good News & Bad
 

I received a call from Danny Strutinsky of RAC last night. It's a good thing he called between the 1st & 2nd period of the hockey game. He had both good and bad news about the M-Car program.

They were testing the first mule (originally a '93) Tuesday. The good news is that the car actually drove under it's own power. No auxilary power umbilicals were attached. He said the car went about 67 feet before they had to be shut it down. He also said that it probably did about 3 mph.

The bad news is that they had to shut it down because the right rear drive unit overheated causing the drive unit fairing, which is fiberglass, to catch fire. The fire was quickly extiguished without much damage.

Danny said that now, they will not bring the M-Car to the 10th Anniv. SVX Meet.

The difficult part is that it is now obvious that the M-drives run lot hotter than predicted. They were cooled using outside air blown thru the housing and employing special venturies using the Conanda effect to chill the air. I had done some of the early heat transfer calculations for this system. The thinking is that the M-Car will need an on board chilled air, refrigeration system to cool the drive units. I am thinking of a 2-stage system. The low pressure stage for passenger AC, and the high stage to cool the drive units. Too bad R-22 is being phased out. I still want to see a once thru cooling air system, but the problem is condensation and freezing especially in hot, humid areas like Houston. A recirculation system may be required. These are only technical problems. They will eventually be solved.

I feel great about this This must be how the Wright brothers felt after Kitty Hawk and the guys at NASA felt after the moon landing. It's times like this that I really enjoy being an engineer (and the pay ain't bad either).

Larry III

Sorry if I didnt see it before, but..What exactly is the 'M-Car'?

Keep in mind I just woke up and im not thinking straight, maybe i'll figure it out when i wake up. :o :D

Oh ... I thought 67 feet, & the rear wheel bearing caught fire.
By the way, I too must have slept through the first two acts. What's the M project & why should I care.

Thank - Ron.

what they said^^^

All that I can say on the subject is that the SVX is one of the the prototype mule vehicles on a project to develope an automotive propulsion system that does not use an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.
The system is quite radical and I may not live to see it reach fruition. Heck, I never thought that i'd see a car with this propulsion system move under it's own power.

I can hear the laughter now, guys. It's not science fiction. It's engineering.

Larry III

Whoa! Larry, back up. You're saying that the SVX, as in the ones that we as a collective group of fanatics, the same funny windowed coupe, is/was/will be used as a prototype for some kind of star wars propulsion system? If you tell me about it will you have to kill me? Are you sure you weren't posting before the alarm clock went off this morning?

Ron. Uh... no, it's DON, yeah, that's the ticket.

Ron,

It's not star wars. It is simply adapting a combination of existing technologies to work together for automotive use. That's all a Hond Insight or a fuel cell powered car does. An SVX is on of the test prototypes. Yeah that funny windowed coupe is a tool used for testing. I suspect, but have never been told, that they got an SVX because it was cheap to obtain.

Larry III

What's next...a TIME MACHINE? :D

I'm hoping for a methane powered SVX with the fuel filler in the driver's seat. As much as I like Chili and beans, I could keep the darned thing running forever! :D

Yes, & if they added two more cylinders it could be called the SVX flatul-8.

Ron.

You guys don't understand. It's not pie-in-the-sky.
It's currently available technologies combined and applied in a different way.

Larry III

I went back & read your original post. Now I get it. The car is powered by a huge (battery driven?) AC compressor. Cool. Am I getting close?
Engineers is what drives trains.

Ron.

There are a million ways to power a car. Because the internal combustion engine is so developed and it's technology is so entrenched; any new propulsion system must compete economically with the IC rengine. I will give you an example using hydrogen fuel cells.

Currently there is no infrastucture to produce, store and fuel cars with hydrogen. Besides that could be quite dangerous.
Therefore. the ideal system would be to continually create a small amount of hydrogen onboard the vehicle, pass it thru the fuel cell membrane to generate electricity to power the car.
All of us know from high school (well at least those of us who graduated high school, Ron) that you can use electolysis to separate water into hydrogen & oxygen . Think of a car that has a black roof and trunk deck. The black body sections are solar photovoltaic cells. These would not provide enough electricity for electrolysis. However, if the car also had a micro tubine-generator set on board, and it was used in addition to the solar cells, then enough electricity can be supplied for electolysis. The turbine can be set up to to operate at one point which would be highly efficient. Once the hydrogen is separated out and passed thru the fuel cell, electricity is generated to power elctric motor(s) to turn the wheels.
However, this sytem is not economically feasible when competing with the std. gasoline fired, piston, IC engine. Honda and Toyota currently use piston, IC engines to spin a generator that supplies electricity to electric motors which turn the tires. Even these simple sysems can't compete economically.

Both the systems I've outlined above use currently available proven technology. The M-car project does not use this type of technology. It does not use fuel cells. It uses different technologies that have already been proven. The trick is to combine them in such a way that the car offers all of advantages of current automobiles and is still affordable to the general public.

The wankle engine (Mazda RX-7) could not compete economically with the IC, piston engine. It had a niche, but was too expensive to repair and had trouble meeting anti-pollution stds. I give Mazda & Ford a lot of credit for trying.


GM has been trying to develope the 2-cycle engine, for years, to meet pollution stds. They currently have a development/test program going on in Australia. I wish them good luck.


Larry III

An optomist sees the glass of water as half full
A pessimist sees the glass of water as half empty
An engineer sees the glass as being twice as big as it should be.
Ron sees the glass of water as someting to use to brush his teeth after drinking a Box-O-Wine.

Sorry, Larry: I didn't mean to imply that you weren't serious about the technology advancements in future propulsion systems. I mean despite my eighth grade edukatin', I did manage to apply myself to scientific research, & later in life teamed with Al Gore, & worked on the 2 cycle Wankle photovoltaic fuel cell system. Unfortunately, the internet project came up, & we postponed the propulsion system research. However, we did keep all our data in a lockbox, & someday plan to resume the research, & thusly save the world from mass starvation.

When I see the Box 'o Wine half full, I say," Boy, I've got some work to do!"

Rongore.
;) ;)

Me fail Englisch? Unpossible!!