by Rick Badman

Created on: October 18, 2008   Last Updated: July 24, 2011

In 1899, the fastest automobile in the world was an electric car that could travel at 60 mph. For years, some of the only closed cars to protect drivers and passengers from the elements were Baker Electrics. They were quiet, clean, easy to start most of the time, and easy to maintain. One drawback was range as it still is. But some recent innovations and those on the horizon could change that.

One of the innovations is the lithium ion battery. The Tesla is a sports car that has a range of over 300 miles and it doesn't take as long to recharge the batteries as it does to recharge conventional lead acid batteries. But the second problem, a long recharging period, is another drawback. But that problem has been addressed by those that believe service stations should have freshly charged batteries that can be exchanged for expended ones. But in the future, even that problem may be solved.

One way to possibly solve both the range and recharging problems is to build stacked flywheel units that would store kinetic energy which would spin the armatures of motor/generators that are sandwiched between the flywheel containers. Since the containers have to maintain a vacuum to prevent air friction from slowing the flywheels too fast and causing them to melt, by sealing them and the motor/generators between them and having either a liquid cooling or forced air cooling system to cool the armatures, the vacuum should be maintained.

The flywheels could be made from rock quartz, ultra-stressed crystalline molecular solid materials that are formed in ultra-high pressure high-temperature furnaces and molds, and some of the exotic materials being worked with today like fullerenes. These may offer the greatest kinetic energy storage ability. The addition of magnetic belts around the circumference of the flywheels that repel against magnetic belts inside the containers, as long as the belts don't fly off, may produce a linear induction effect to increase kinetic energy storage capability.

The goal I believe that should be achieved to make flywheel-powered vehicles better than gasoline-powered vehicles is a kinetic energy storage capacity of 100 watt-hours of energy per cubic inch of material. That would mean a typical sedan that has two primary stacked flywheel units with a total storage capacity of 15,000 cubic inches may be able to travel over 1000 miles nonstop.

Since the flywheels will spin at upwards to 100,000 RPMs, they need to be sturdy enough not to fly apart and possibly

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