Remember Sunil Kanjoril? He is the guy who modified the wheels of his Hero Honda CBZ (read all about it here). We had a chance to catch up with him a few months ago and heard the sound of his beast, which can be heard more than a mile away. Now Sunil has designed a hybrid SUV concept, which is quite interesting, specially in our current fuel price hike times. Now somebody needs to back up this project and put it into reality. Mr. Sunil explains all about the concept hybrid SUV below.
The concepts name is genesis E. Its a hybrid SUV, that runs on Internal combustion engine + electric engine like today’s hybrid cars. Hence at slower speeds all the four electric motors in the wheels propel the vehicle. when the vehicle speed excels 40 kmph the Internal Combustion engine starts working. Also when under heavy acceleration the IC engine kicks in .
The twist here is the way the on-board ” lithium Ion” batteries are charged. The batteries can be charged via external electric source but this generally requires a lot of time to get done. Hence i have introduced a Stirling engine (external combustion engine) to the vehicle. A Stirling engine basically works with the temperature differences of gases which result in expansion and contraction helping in the engines working process. Some of the submarines in the world still work on this mechanism.
A lot of heat is generated from a gasoline engine and also there is a lot of heat generated at the brakes and exhaust systems too. The idea is to not let this heat go to waste and use it for a constructive purpose. A solar panel + all the above mentioned heat sources generate a lot of heat. A series of tubes containing molten salt (60% sodium nitrate+ 40 % potassium nitrate) is pumped through them. These tubes run around all the heat sources inside the car trapping available heat. The salt being an excellent heat absorber, absorbs the heat and stores in a heat storage tank. This heat and an external coolant helps create drastic temperature differences in the Stirling motor thus making it work. Which in turns charges the on-board batteries thus saving energy.