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I have written this as a story in past tense, recounting the actions of the Mad Genius and the people he dealt with in relation to his inventions. However, the purpose is and remains simply to find out whether these ideas can be transformed into working technology, which could reduce fossil fuel consumption and pollution, as well as being very convenient for those who use it.
There are two fundamentals to these ideas. The first is the concept that solar power should augment conventional oil or petrol based power sources, instead of replacing it as is done in the vehicles which enter competitions like the Solar Challenge. This means that much of the advantage of solar power (renewable energy, no pollution, etc) can be utilised, but the inefficiencies of photoelectric cells can be compensated for. I call this The 95% Rule: the first 95% of the advantages of a certain thing are reached with the first 5% of the effort. The actual value of 95% is subject to variation in different circumstances.
Things which require high performance or high power are conspicuously absent from these solar-powered machines - solar power is purely for energy efficiency, and would fare badly against fossil fuel power where more power is needed. I believe that these applications make up the last 5%, and therefore they will remain fossil fuel-powered for a long time yet.
The second fundamental is my idea of what it takes to succeed. It has been said that genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration; I will go further. I believe that the road to success, in a very simplistic manner, can be said to be as follows:
a) Humbly accepting that other people, including people who lived many years ago, those in different fields or those in competing companies, are actually capable of thinking of useful ideas applicable to yourself. Lack of this acceptance is a great barrier to innovation in the world today - everyone re-invents a special breed of wheel tailored to their own field or situation.
b) Grasping hold of those ideas in your own mind. This involves a good knowledge of history and the course of science through the ages, and familiarity with technological advances in the field in question. This takes a lot of mental effort, but is worthwhile in the end.
c) Applying their good ideas to your own situation. This is where the Inspiration and Perspiration come in. The previous steps laid the foundation for this application.
As you have probably guessed, the Mad Genius is a cover name for myself.
The Author, Dec 2000
The idea is as old as mankind: to give a person the ability to fly like a bird - without needing to be inside an enormous aircraft or hot-air balloon. The many attempts at building personal flying machines, even the most practical ones during the 20th Century, were expensive, dangerous and could not carry enough fuel for long flights. The Mad Genius, in a burst of "inventiveness", turned his attention to the problem.
Taking the easiest problem first, he tried to find ways of increasing the sustainability of the machine's flight. Jet engines, even small ones, consume large amounts of fuel, needing a large airframe to give long flights. This would negate most of the advantages of a personal flying machine, so the Mad Genius eliminated jets from his list of power sources. He also crossed off internal combustion engines, not wishing to breathe the exhaust gases while flying. Apart from the unpleasantness and long-term health problems, he knew that if he was rendered unconscious by lack of oxygen while flying, he would be likely to turn into a meteorite.
At last he settled on a powerful electric motor, powered by an array of car batteries, which could be recharged from a mains power point and a transformer. He designed an arrangement where more or less could be mounted for longer or shorter flights, so he would not be carrying extra weight for nothing.
To convert the electric motor's power into thrust, he had several options. Ducted fans looked attractive initially, as they ensured that the fan blades would not come in contact with any surrounding objects, to the detriment of both. However he found that a large central duct would, in displacing the pilot, make the machine too large for its purpose. Placing the pilot in the middle and thrust ducts on the outside would be good for control, but also have problems in total size.
By returning to the standard helicopter design of a rotor on top, he made the machine inherently more stable in flight than many of its predecessors. To increase this advantage the Mad Genius put the batteries at the bottom, under the pilot's seat. To protect the pilot from the blast, he put a shield of sheet aluminium under the rotor, angled so as not to make the thrust ineffective.
After experimenting with various positions for the motor, he put it under the seat with the batteries, with a long drive shaft inside the central pole which formed the backbone of the machine. This kept the centre of gravity low, but made steering difficult, because the rotors could not be angled (helicopter-style) without using a complex and inefficient universal joint. After some thought, the Mad Genius mounted the batteries on a rack and allowed them to be moved to different positions to make the whole machine tilt.
To give the machine even more range, the Mad Genius put a bank of solar panels on the aluminium shield, where they would catch enough sunlight to augment the batteries and increase the range of the machine most effectively.
So the hard work was over. Now the easy job came: naming the machine. After many people had suggested names like "Mad Genius's Personal Flying Machine" and "One-man Electric Wing Flapper" the Mad Genius insisted on finding his own. Eventually he decided on Pogo-Chopper, "for want of anything better" he said.
CSIRO had already made several researches into this area, the results of which had been incorporated into the latest generation of Falcons and Commodores. However, a study by a railway-minded scientist and the Mad Genius concluded that even greater efficiency might result from some rather drastic redesigns. These included several railway-type technologies like electric transmission, all-electric computerised controls, multiple-unit "lash-ups" with only one driver, and less compressible wheels.
| Electric Transmission |
Other advantages of electric transmission were easy to find by looking at railway locomotives, which have used electric transmission for over 60 years. Rigid drive shafts could be replaced by electric cables carrying current to axle-mounted traction motors. As well as saving space, this would allow both axles to be powered and steered, without the complex drive shaft arrangements needed for four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering cars with mechanical transmission. Regenerative brakes could be fitted, which, as well as reducing wear on brakes and wheels, actually retrieve useable energy when braking, by recharging storage batteries instead of throwing the energy away as heat.
Even more advantages would be possible if large capacity batteries were installed to store excess generated energy when over-powering and use it when needed. Most obviously, the energy which was generated by the engine while the car was not moving (such as waiting at traffic lights) would not be wasted but stored - a very neat work-around to a fundamental problem of the internal-combustion engine, the need for it to keep running at speed to maintain its equilibrium. Secondly, the engine could be restricted to running at a constant speed, while retaining the car's wide range of possible speeds - this meant that the engine could be designed for much better fuel economy. As a bonus, these large batteries could provide current for all the car's other electrical systems when the engine was not running, and also for the starter motor. In this way it was acting like an enlarged version of an ordinary car's battery, but with much more capacity. A car parked with its headlights on would take several days to run down the batteries. For a car user this was one more potential headache removed.
It was decided to run the car on 240 volt AC electricity, and provide a power cord so that the car could be plugged into a household power point overnight to recharge the batteries. Also the other systems which used the car's power grid would be compatible with standard off-the-shelf household appliances. To increase the usefulness of this, power points were installed in several places in the car.
As a final touch to make the Dual-Electric Car perform even better, a large solar panel was installed on the roof, to assist in charging the storage batteries. On bright sunny days or short trips it would be possible to run on batteries and solar power alone, without even starting the gas engine. Car-bound commuters could run the batteries down in the morning and have them recharge from the sun and from external power while the car was parked, ready for the journey home. Smog in the city would be drastically reduced.
It was this dual power source which gave rise to the name of this new design, the Dual-Electric Car. In its early stages on the drawing board it was referred to as the Railway-Inspired Petrol-Electric Car; this was to have been replaced by Solar/Gas-Electric, but the Mad Genius thought that the shorter title (also removing the confusing reference to railways) would be more acceptable to the public.
After all the efficiency features allowed by the electric transmission, it would be difficult to envision any improvement to come near it in importance. However, more was to come. It was said that at the public launch, the demonstrating scientist was heard to recommend to the watchers that they "prop up their jaws".
| Other technologies |
With all-electronic controls, it was easy to implement multiple-unit configuration. Two cars could be coupled together and driven as one, with the two internal computers communicating by means of a set of jumper cables. The way this was done was simplicity itself: at the front of each car was a tow hook like that of a trailer, which coupled to the tow bar of the leading unit. After connecting up electric cables, the second (or "trailing") car would perfectly imitate the first or "leading". Railways had used this technology for over sixty years. On top of this, the two cars could pool their electric inputs for even better fuel efficiency. It was optional whether both gas engines were running or just one, but in practice the second engine was usually superfluous. In this way two cars going to the same place could reduce fuel costs and driver fatigue in one blow. It was decided to limit the number of cars in a "lash-up" to two, not because of technical difficulties, but out of courtesy to other drivers who might find it difficult to overtake a long convoy.
Temperature, oil, current, battery status, speed, and all other instruments were on a jet fighter-type Head Up Display, projected onto the windscreen right where the driver is always looking. Emergency and warning messages were put up with them.
The wheels brought various reactions from different people: some said that it was "putting the clock back", while others maintained that it was "returning to simple reliability". The fact was that this new car was designed to be fitted with solid rubber tyres. This made them more expensive, but meant that punctures and blowouts were a thing of the past. Of course the suspension system had to be improved to take the load that used to be carried by the pneumatic tyres, but after much discussion, the consensus was that it was a low price to pay for the advantages. Never again would a car take more fuel than usual because the tyres were slightly flat, nor would uneven pressure require steering correction.
After being awarded a Nobel Prize for his design, the CSIRO scientist who put this all together stated, "There's nothing new under the sun. None of these improvements needed to be invented, they were already around in some form or another, and the only reason it wasn't in the car already was because nobody had done it. How much better off we would be if we freely adopted other people's ideas instead of trying to do everything our own way."
| New Features |
There was a full Personal Computer built into the car. It controlled all the instruments and other vitals of the car, as well as supporting the data ports which were available at all the seats. Thus a salesman could put a printer on the floor and print out a long report while on the move, or even hold a conference with colleagues or customers.
The PC also controlled the car's stereo, which was renamed the Multimedia System. It had a cassette deck, CD and DVD player and even a video cassette recorder. All had read and write access. It could also pick up TV signals and AM, FM, short wave, VHF and UHF radio. There were four spare input and output ports available, so video cameras, TV screens, radio transmitters, or any other device could be plugged into the Multimedia System and utilised on the run.
As well as four speakers, the car had a telephone handsets at each seat, and one cordless handset with a 1.5km range was installed in case more mobility was required.
The Multimedia System was linked to a built-in mobile phone, which had several advantages over normal mobile phones. First, it could run off the car's internal power grid, removing the necessity of recharging the battery. Second, the high power radio emissions were removed from the user's head, reducing the risk of long-term health problems. As a bonus, the PC multimedia system added much more extra functionality: recording and playing back messages, playing recorded music over the phone, far greater address book capacity, and even fax and internet usage, with the appropriate software installed.
A low-intensity collision warning radar constantly watched the road ahead to reduce accidents, using Doppler radar to distinguish between moving and stationary objects. The computer automatically applied the brakes in case of danger. The Doppler also operated the speedometer, which made it a more accurate system of measuring ground speed than the usual wheel revolution counter.
Provision was made in hardware and software for automatic driving, using road-based short range infra-red or radio transmitters to give the necessary information to the computer, but until the roads were so equipped it was not able to be used.
For navigation, there was a Global Positioning System receiver. This was linked through the computer to the electronic maps, which were prepared by Melway (with their usual attention to accuracy and quality) and covered the whole of Australia in detail. The map format was placed in the public domain so that map makers in other countries could interface to the Dual-Electric Car. In preparing for a trip, the computer could automatically plot the most direct route from the current position to the destination. The user could specify certain placed to avoid, such as traffic jams, accidents or rough roads. There was also provision for the computer to download up-to-date traffic reports from the internet (via the mobile phone) and automatically apply them.
The layout of the Head Up Display was fully customizable: by plugging a keyboard and screen into the ports on the dashboard and running the program called "Head Up Display Layout", the user could drag and drop objects representing the various instrument displays onto a large window, scale them up or down, move them around, choose to display or not display one certain instrument, or switch between analog and digital (according to driver preference). Text and pictures could also be added. It was even possible to make a certain object appear or disappear when a certain thing happened, normal usage being warning messages for problems such as fuel state, engine or traction motor temperature. Of course a default HUD was in place when the car came out of the factory, so a "computer-illiterate" person could use the car, but anyone who wanted to rearrange his instruments or add unusual features could do so.
The ultra-modern hydraulic suspension, which was introduced to maintain a comfortable ride in the absence of pneumatic tyres, allowed for a further enhancement in comfort. An optional feature used a gyroscope and accelerometers to keep the apparent force, as felt by the people inside, directly towards the floor of the car. This meant that it would tilt the body inwards when rounding curves at speed, backwards while braking hard, and closer to level when on steeply sloping roads. The most obvious beneficiary of this feature was the owner of a very full cup of coffee - the chance of spilling it was considerably lessened. From the dawn of aviation pilots have been trained to make properly co-ordinated turns. The Mad Genius found it difficult to believe that it took car designers 100 years to catch up.
The PC was operated by a system called eComStation, which could be relied on never to let the vitals of the car go wrong because of an internal bug. In case of what eComStation users call "SI-type" errors (SI for Self Inflicted), there were triple-redundant CPUs and memory, with hardware devices which would put a "clean" system in play if the primary system was corrupted. The backup systems did not support any of the "convenience" extras, not even the customizable HUD - this way it was guaranteed not to have any potential errors. As a last safety measure, if all three computers failed, the driver would be notified on the HUD and the brakes would be applied to stop the car in as safe a manner as possible. However the chances of this happening in normal usage were so remote as to be considered impossible.
As a bonus, eComStation had very extensive language support, so the car's warning messages could be displayed in whatever language was most familiar to the driver.
The result was indeed of "prop up your jaw" proportions. Still however, there was absolutely no new technology there. Every piece of hardware and software already existed - all the Customer Relations division did was put it all together in a way that would be useful to the customers.
The result looked similar to a standard van, just as the Dual-Electric Car and the Light Speeders had seemed similar to their own predecessors. Again, however, the similarity was only cosmetic: on the cheque book and credit card it bore very little resemblance to an ordinary van.
The most obvious change was a low floor between the wheels, known as a Drop-Centre. In passenger configuration, it reduced the height which people needed to climb up to get in; as a commercial van it increased the space available for payload. It also made the centre of gravity lower, giving the van more stability when rounding corners. Drop-Centre trams had been in use for over eighty years, but road vehicles could not be built this way until the use of electric transmission had eliminated rigid drive shafts.
On the floor of the van's body there were several rows of bolt holes, arranged in sets of four in a square pattern. Various types of seats could be bolted into the floor this way, including single bucket seats and benches of two and three, all with various levels of comfort and price. Seats could be arranged facing forwards or backwards, and three-seat benches could cross the rows longitudinally. Between the front seats was a similar arrangement of bolts, which could contain another seat or a console or armrest unit, or could be left empty to allow walk-through access.
In the computer world, Object Oriented means that everything exists in objects. All objects have properties, and objects with similar properties can be acted on in the same way. Also, new objects can be designed with the same properties, which can put in place without any changes to the larger systems. In the Object-Oriented Van, the seats, consoles and armrests all had similar properties - that is, they were attached to the floor with the same pattern of bolts, and were within certain size limits - and could therefore be placed in any of the positions. A carrier of unusual loads might design a special rack for its own use, and could use the bolt holes without any changes to the Van's body. Alternatively, new seats could be designed and fitted with ease.
There were many other other similar objects. Various steering wheels were available: there were wheels of different diameters to suit the driver's preference; horns were in various places; there were higher and lower priced wheels giving a range of comfort, surface material and heat resistance; some had thicker rims for people with arthritis. Any other special applications were easily catered for, by simply designing a new object with the same properties.
Tyres came in various sizes and tread patterns for different conditions; also solid and pneumatic versions were available according to the customer's preference. An unusual requirement such as making the van float and mounting paddles on the wheels would be a simple matter of designing a new object.
Object orientation had been present in an incomplete form in the world of motor vehicles for some time, but this focus on exploiting its advantages opened up a whole new world for motorists. And of course, the advantages of Dual-Electric power would be a plus for everyone.