Replies to post #93 on ToroTrak fka LSE:TRK

[hebgb]

For once I’ve started to get excited by something that Torotrak has done. On first reading I took this to be an application in a small (if prestigious) niche market. I’m sure the license fee per box would be considerably higher than that for road cars, but then there wouldn’t be that many of them.

Then I read the following article:

http://www.tbm-f1.de/articles.html

and it becomes clear that this could be very big indeed. Here is a system that would do away with all those silly electric motors and batteries that make the Toyota Prius so expensive to build and heavy to lug around. I can quite imagine that the weight of the total package for a road car would be a fraction of that used in F1, which in itself must be light enough not to hinder performance.

The only query I have is that of the gyroscopic effect going round corners, but then again, if it works in F1 it’s got to work on the road.

[dread50above]

Very interesting indeed. Another technology set out for the race track as proving grounds. I was struck by this paragraph in hebgb's linked article:

Almost any mechanical engineer (and most others!) on the planet would jump at the chance of joining a Formula One team. It’s the most competitive and prestigious engineering activity of all, beating aerospace and computing hands down. Now the FIA has told these engineers to stop playing around and to concentrate on doing something useful, which is precisely what most engineers prefer doing. The Directors of R&D in the major auto companies are going to realize, once they’ve recovered from the shock, that they now have the awesome talents of their racing divisions aimed at one of their key corporate objectives. The clever ones will insist that Racing is still paid for by Marketing, but will also make sure that technology transfer is pursued aggressively. The pace of hybrid development will then accelerate as only a race car can.

Nice development.