Well, I finally bought a new car. I have a long commute to work with no possibility of public transportation, so I spent some time looking for a car that was dependable, was comfortable for me, and had good gas mileage.
I didn’t get a Prius because I spend most of my driving time on the highway, and the fuel efficiency of the Prius on the highway is not much better than the car I bought. It charges its electric system when you use the brake, and I don’t hit the brake too often between the entrance ramp and the exit ramp. I don’t speed, but I am a steady driver and you just don’t brake much on the highway. The second day I drove my new car a groundhog ran across the highway in front of me, and I would have generated some electricity then if I had been driving a Prius. But ordinarily the groundhogs just wave as I go by, they don’t run into the road. So I don’t brake much. So I didn’t buy a Prius.
But I did think about one. I thought about how I might spring for the extra money if it could charge its battery on the highway.
People who know me know that I am a little wierd when I start thinking about how some little ordinary thing might be done with what we have at hand. I have been that way a long time, and I can’t help it. Some things work and some do not.
One invention that did work came from watching my little one try to drink from his Evenflo bottle while riding in a car seat. He could hold the bottle, but he looked really uncomfortable tipping his head back to get the liquid to the nipple. I thought about this problem for a day or two, then I cut a big hole in the nipple, inverted it in the bottle, screwed on the ring, and pushed a drinking straw through the hole. The straw fitted snugly, the bottle was spill-proof, and the child could sit up and drink. I credit this early version of the sports bottle/squeezer with helping my children learn to read (books not being printed on ceilings, ordinarily), and it did turn heads in restaurants. I didn’t patent the thing, but my children and the children of my friends who caught the idea had squeezers long before the first one was on the market.
Now I’m thinking about how to charge the electric motor in that Prius. I figure it needs a little spoiler on the back end with some little windmills built into it and linked to a small generator. I don’t know why that wouldn’t work. Put your window down at 60 mph and see how much wind you have out there. Or maybe the little windmills could hide behind the grille or be built around the headlights. Or my son says you might be able to add little ramscoops to the sides.
I don’t know why that wouldn’t work.
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I’m not an engineer, but I don’t think that would work. The initial problem is one of wind resistance. The Prius is designed to have as low a wind resistance as possible, but to generate power from wind you have to put something with high wind resistance in the way. The result would certainly be decreased highway gas mileage. How much is debatable, but the benefit you’d get would certainly not be much.
If you’re doing mostly highway miles, not only are you rarely charging the electric battery, you are also rarely _using_ the electric battery. At highway speeds, you are all gas all the time. So adding a windmill or other wind-power generation device to your car would cut gas milage to charge a device you rarely use anyway.
I’m not an engineer, but I don’t think that would work. The initial problem is one of wind resistance. The Prius is designed to have as low a wind resistance as possible, but to generate power from wind you have to put something with high wind resistance in the way. The result would certainly be decreased highway gas mileage. How much is debatable, but the benefit you’d get would certainly not be much.
If you’re doing mostly highway miles, not only are you rarely charging the electric battery, you are also rarely _using_ the electric battery. At highway speeds, you are all gas all the time. So adding a windmill or other wind-power generation device to your car would cut gas milage to charge a device you rarely use anyway.