Wednesday June 21, 2006

F1 racing to go hybrid

greencarcongress.com -> evworld.com -> formula1.com :

The FIA (the governing body of world motor sport) has declared its intention to drag Formula One into the 21st century. The announcement's impact on road cars should excite everyone who is concerned about fuel prices and global warming. The central message is that the most technically advanced and heavily-funded form of motor sport will now be obliged to focus on fuel economy, one of the key issues that concern ordinary drivers.

The President of the FIA, Max Moseley, gave a stark warning to the auto makers (BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Fiat, Honda, Renault/Nissan, Toyota, etc) who control most of the Formula One teams, that they were spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year just trying to get a few more rpm out of their racing engines. This was unsustainable, and wasted superb engineering resources on an ultimately futile objective. Formula One should be the proving ground for advanced automotive technology, but it has fallen behind in areas such as fuel consumption. The FIA has now decided to allow hybrids from the beginning of 2009.

The FIA is placing only two major constraints on the technology used. The first, which is paramount, is safety. The second is a weight limit of 20 kilograms (44 lbs) for the complete 'surge power unit'. For example, if ultra-capacitors are used, the motor and controller/inverter must be included within the 20 kg weight budget. Among the alternatives are hydraulic systems and kinetic energy storage systems. The FIA estimates that the early systems will be capable of delivering some 60 bhp of additional power for as much as nine seconds, with peak power doubling over several years of further development.

Despite the light weight of the current F1 cars, they usually get only 4 miles per gallon on a typical track. The fuel consumption is so high because the cars repeatedly surge up to 180 mph or more and then brake heavily, many times in each lap of a typical circuit, throwing away the kinetic energy of the car as heat from the brakes every time they do it. There is genuine potential for race-bred Formula One technology to find its way, eventually, into road cars. The FIA appears to agree with Toyota's view that almost all road vehicles will eventually have regenerative braking.

(2006-06-21 19:21:12 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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