Statically mounted wind generators gain energy from the atmospheric energy derived from the sun. A wind generator mounted on a car derives energy from the movement of the car whose energy is derived from its engine. You cannot get free energy by increasing the resistance of a car to its movement which a turbine mounted on a car would do. You only slow down the car which is counterproductive.

Sand is right. There is no real benefit to this concept as the energy derived from the turbines is negated by the added gasoline needed to push the vehicle forward.

A lot of the ideas here are judged inadequate because they are just that. Call a horse a horse.

Well-intentioned people tend to make suggestions in areas they have no business or background in. Your wind generator idea is a brilliant example of such. You stated you were no engineer; in fact, you aren't familiar with the forces involved at all.

In a think tank or business, everyone has already been judged and passes some minimum standard for intelligence/knowledge. In that environment, no one is making suggestions that don't adhere to the laws of physics. Therefore, everyone is contributing. On the internet, there is no minimum requirement for anything. Anyone can make any far-fetched or useless suggestion that they want to. And again, anyone can reply to that suggestion with any far-fetched or useless criticism they want to.

Toasty is right. You should not be discouraged by the amount of reasons why it will not work but pushed forward to find a way to re-think your idea to make it work. With that said we could look at different composite materials to make something like this work or perhaps re-assign the direction of where the energy would flow. Perhaps you could use such a device to cool the brakes of the vehicle to extend the life of the pads. Keep thinking about it.

There are small aircraft that use a deployable wind turbine to provide emergency power in the case of alternator failure on the aircraft. But it reduces the airspeed of the aircraft because of the friction flowing over the increased surface area and the shapes involved causing wind turbulence.

A place where you might mount a turbine without causing additional turbulence might be on the trailing body of the moving vehicle. Potentially, the shape of the turbine housing and moving fan could produce improved aerodynamic performance by breaking up the vacuum formed by certain vehicle shapes. But modifying the body shape would probably improve aerodynamic efficiency less expensively than mounting the turbine.

I saw this idea elsewhere on the site today and lost it so I may as well expound here...

The idea of placing a wind generator on a vehicle to provide top up power is feasible although due to the nature of thermodynamics it is going to be less efficient than simply replacing your alternator.

BUTIt is commercially viable and usefull if...

You conceal the generator behind a panel, which, when the brake is depressed, reveals the turbine increasing vehicles drag, theoretically improving braking and making better use of the energy that is usually lost when the vehicle decelerates. This power can then be harnessed as a top up source, it is minimal (maybe 150w for 1min every hour), but wind generators are inexpensive.

I was actually thinking the same thing for the past day and I thought I had might come up with a perpetual motion machine. Anyway, they can't put multiple tires on a car and make that a generator somehow or design something that has multiple wind generators that are light and drop them down which might produce more energy than it took to lift it?

I was actually thinking the same thing for the past day and I thought I had might come up with a perpetual motion machine. Anyway, they can't put multiple tires on a car and make that a generator somehow or design something that has multiple wind generators that are light and drop them down which might produce more energy than it took to lift it?

Come to think of it, I guess what it all comes down to is that I'm asking if you need friction to move these wind generators.

Come to think of it, I guess what it all comes down to is that I'm asking if you need friction to move these wind generators.

Come to think of it, I guess the question I'm asking as far as the wheel goes is if you need friction and I guess that's probly what's wrong with all these ideas.

First of all I'd like to say this thing that keeps making my comments up twice is enraging me (it's hard to explain). Anyway, I've been researching and it doesn't sound like they need more friction. So I want to know if this would work. Really, the only reason I think it won't is because you'd think they'd have found out by now. Or would it just not produce enough energy?

“Conservation of Momentum”, “Conservation of Energy”, and “Newton's Laws of Motion”, Basically state that if you try to ignore what Newton has to say, he gets to climb out of his hole and kick you’re butt. A basic definition of ‘Conservation of Energy’ is, you’ll never get more out then you put in. In fact, most of the time any new development to an old idea is re-designing it to be more efficient by reducing undesirable friction/heating of some kind.

NASA to the rescue: Check out these weblinks for the answers you seek.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/newton.html

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/conmo.html

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/thermo1f.html

Remember Newton is a tough old bird who likes to scrap with anybody, every year he takes on thousands and thousands of college students, scientists and engineers. Every once in a while someone might get in a sucker-punch but he hasn’t gone down for the count yet.

;) D-

If you live where there is lots of wind, such a device could generate electricity while the car was parked. Otherwise, nothing to be gained.

The basic premise that you can neither create or destroy energy in a system is well understood. The piece we may be overlooking is our efficiency at capturing delivered (or available) energy.

Put another way, we know that certain features (shape, things which cause drag or impede air flow) impact mileage. My thinking around this (flawed as it may be) is that we aren't efficently capturing all of the available/ deliverable energy in the automotive system now.

With that in mind, a respctful discouse on taking advantage of untapped "wasted" energy in the automotive system might make sense.

What is needed here is an engineer who can calculate the net drag effects for a variety of placements of a wind generator.

I came to this site because I too had the idea that in the front end of a vehicle, where there exists perhaps, air inlets or "holes" in the bumbper, a small turbine or scoop could be put in place and used to genertae a electricity for a battery system.

I remembered reading an article about an aircraft that mistakeningly took off with an insufficient fuelload and only at atltitude di they realize whathappened. So they deployed some emergency air scoop inlet to provide minimal system power (c0ntrol surfaces/instruments) and make a safe landing. Now I know that a jet aircraft flying (falling) at several hundred miles an hour is different, but the basic idea seems intuitively, "doable".

New kind of hybrid? Start with gas and run on one set of batteries, while charging the other. The faster you go, the faster the wind turbine goes and the more juice goes to your charging set.

If energy systems are closed, we could start from a premise that the FIRST charge, coes fomr your hoe overnight. Now we have added energy into a system from an external source. It wasn't free, but the subsequent energy while driving might be, given that we are "emptying at the same time we are filling".

Obviously, I am not a physicist, but I agree with som eof the other posters that a more open conversation, with the solicitaiton of real engineers, might ne more beneficial than some of the attitude and naysaying.

We can get anywhere without hard work AND vision. Respectful comments welcome, even if they are contradictory.

Jace

Sorry for the typos, I should have proofread my note, before submitting it.

Jace