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TH!NK City, Stirling Engines and Dean Kamen
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| Will Dean Kamen's Stirling Engine fit TH!NK City EV's? |
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| TH!NK City EV |
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Dean Kamen has spent over $40 million in the last decade developing stirling engines which convert heat directly into mechanical energy by use of an expanding and contracting gas inside a cylinder. His stirling engines are already being used in developing countries. There are a couple in India that can power an entire village by burning cow patties. But Kamen started to realize that stirling engines would never be economical until they were mass produced.
Which is when he met the CEO of the electric car company, THiNK, and decided that he'd found his method of mass production. He'd put a stirling engine inside an electric car, and use the engine to recharge the batteries along the road. The range of the electric car would thus be extended by hundreds of miles, and any fuel (gasoline, McDonald's grease, trash, cow poop) could be used to keep the batteries charged.
Kamen also mentions that the engines, once mass produced, could be used to economically feed power into the grid during peak demand as well as power off grid applications in remote or developing areas. As long as his engines are clean and efficient, and the fuel he uses to heat them carbon neutral, I really can't see a disadvantage here. But we're going to have to see some prototypes tested with some different fuels before we'll know whether this is just another awesome technology for a niche market (like both the segway and the insulin pump) or if he's really going to change the world this time.
More at 'Green Wombat' About Dean Kamen's Stirling Solution ->
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(July 2007) -- Think's zippy little Web-enabled, carbon-free electric driving machine could help reverse 100 years of automotive history.
Did someone kill the electric car? You wouldn't know it on this bright May morning in Scandinavia, where the idea of a mass-produced battery-powered vehicle is being resurrected and actual cars are scheduled to begin rolling off the production line by year's end.
Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhard flew to Oslo to take a spin and sent back his people to hammer out a deal to supply Think with high-power lithium-ion batteries. An executive from PG&E (Charts, Fortune 500), the giant California utility, dropped by during his vacation to talk about giving Think a foothold in the Golden State. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter, paid a visit, became an investor, and is now working on what could be the next breakthrough in automotive technology
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Read More at CNN Business News |
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| TH!NK City Electric Car |
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| Think Global brings its inexpensive, eco-friendly, City electric vehicles to the U.S. next year (2009). More |
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