While we're discussing Mini Baja rules, what do you guys think about the ban on
any other energy storage devices beside the hydraulic accumulator? What was
wrong with the earlier rule allowing any energy storage devices but they have
to start at zero energy? I think there are a few ways to allow the energy
devices and open up the engineering aspect of the vehicles other than just
build an off-road gokart.
Here are a couple of ideas I thought of on the fly, so feel free to nitpick if
you wish, but do realize that neither of the following ideas were fully thought
of:
The hybrids that we've gotten in the past did not pass this rule, so they are
disqualified. But, how about hybrids that uses capacitors as energy storage?
For example, under normal cicrumstances, the Briggs turns a generator to power
the electric motors directly via a speed controller. When not all of the power
is used to power the electric motors, the extra power is used to charge a bank
of high discharge capacitors. When the bank of capacitors are full, THEN the
Briggs would be throttled down to power what's needed by the electric motors.
The capacitors are there to provide extra boost for short amounts of time.
Another idea to allow any and all stored energy devices would be to reduce the
amount of fuel they can start with during the endurance race. Whatever amount
of energy they have in their energy storage devices would be subtracted by the
same amount of fuel that would provide that same amount of energy. This gets a
little more complicated during dynamic events other than endurance, but
doable. We can add an amount of weight to the vehicles. The amount of weight
added would be the same amount that would require the same amount of energy
they have in their energy storage devices.
Thanks,
Andre S
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