Hydraulic Ford hybrid

This is a really interesting story, if true, (via digg) about a new drive system that Ford is working on that can give a standard F-150 pickup (I'm a GMC man myself) 60mpg.

Hydraulic
Hybrids work in the same manner, only instead of batteries, excess
energy is stored in hydraulic cylinders.That in itself is not
revolutionary, except for the fact that Nickel Metal Hydride batteries
used today are not an efficient way to store energy, and hydraulic
storage blows them away with 3X the efficiency.

It's also a perfect example of how disruptive developments are beyond prediction and defy current trends. For years critics have been saying vehicles have to be smaller just like the enlightened Europeans because they get better fuel economy, and then later because big vehicles are unsafe. As it turns out, the large platform that a truck offers is perfect for this kind of system.

The tax breaks for buying one would be huge based on the fuel saving over comparable 2002 models, and if I'm a small business owner and I buy a big enough one I get to write off something like 75% of the total cost, and I'd get one of those HOV access stickers for buying one, sweet.

Comments

[SV Sleuth]

nothing new. The number one result on Google for "ford hydraulic hybrid" is this story from last December:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051218/AUTO01/512180348/1148

Secondly: the 3x improvement is in the STORAGE of the energy, not for the actual engine, or so it seems. That makes sense since no changes are made to the engine. The article projects a 60 pct spkike in energy efficiency. Impressive, but a far cry from 300 pct.

[jeff]

true, but it occured to me that the propulsion may actually be an expansion of the transmission as it's own power source. An automatic transmission is basically a hydraulic pump attached to a bunch of valves and a set of planetary gears. If you could store energy in a hydraulic piston and then release it to the transmission when needed you would remove a significant load from the engine, as opposed to having an electrical motor spin the transmission pump as is the case with current hybrids.