[Land-speed] End of the High performance car???

[John Thornton]

Jon Bishop wrote:
> On Feb 14, 2008, at 10:58 AM, John Thornton wrote:
>
>   
>> If gasoline isn't refined in huge quantities for road vehicles it will
>> be expensive as hell and difficult to obtain. Think AVGas only worse.
>> Most people on this list aren't particularly young are they?
>> Don't most of you remember this "end of performance" garbage in the  
>> 1970's?
>> My new Mustang outperforms my uncle's (since destroyed) Shelby  
>> GT350 in
>> every aspect of performance quite easily. It outperforms his GT 500 KR
>> (also since destroyed) as well.
>> A small efficient generator (running on ?) providing AC power to 4 hub
>> motors will make for a very fast ride.
>> At least that's the theory I'm currently working on   : )
>>
>>     
>
> Mitsubishi currently has an Evo that has 4 AC hub motors. It makes  
> over a thousand pounds of torque. I think each wheel makes close to 280.
>
> Electric motor tech isn't our big problem. It's batteries. Once we  
> have better batteries, everything will go electric. Until then, it's  
> just not practical.


Generating electricity on-board makes more sense right now. More so than 
storing energy anyway.
Partial load throttle response is a problem for current lean burn 
technology but that isn't an issue for a motor used only to generate 
electricity.
We can use a lean burn motor only to generate electricity and 
drastically improve economy while not sacrificing performance.
It is possible to get ~50 to ~60 mpg and get performance comparable to a 
500 bhp motor. We have the technology to do this right now and at a 
reasonable cost.
I'm working on a small lean burn motor incorporating infinitely variable 
valve lift, timing, and duration towards this end right now. Since none 
of this is yet patented I can't really go into any detail but it is all 
very "doable" as they say.

John Thornton