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| Wireless Recharging |
Magnetic inductive-charging pads save the hassle of plugging in your
cell phone, camera, MP3 player, or portable GPS unit. Scaled up, this
approach could also recharge an electric car’s battery. Both Rolls-Royce
and Audi have shown experimental systems in which energy is transferred
inductively from a floor pad to a corresponding surface on the bottom
of a car. According to Rolls, magnetic inductive recharging is
90-percent efficient and tolerant of alignment errors.
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| Thermal Juice |
One-third of the energy in every gallon of the gas you burn is dumped
out your exhaust pipe as waste heat. Schemes aimed at recouping some of
that energy include turbocharging, turbo compounding (exhaust-driven
turbines geared to the crankshaft), and the steam generators
investigated by both BMW and Honda. A promising approach also under
development at BMW runs on the Seebeck effect that NASA used for decades
to power spacecraft. Semiconductors heated by exhaust gas generate
electricity during acceleration to supplement the re-gen energy
recovered during braking. BMW believes that a thermoelectric generator
(shown here) might improve mileage by five percent.
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