Mike
Lawrence
KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) is providing us with brain fodder.
It seemed vaguely familiar and then I remembered
that I had written about it, in a book, 'The Reynard Story'.
In the
early 1990s, Chrysler owned Lamborghini, which was in Formula One, as a team
and then as an engine supplier.
The engines were useless because the crank casings flexed and nobody discovered
that until it was too late.
Why Chrysler bought Lamborghini is beyond me, it was in deep enough trouble
trying to make an ordinary product.
Chrysler
tried selling the Neon in the UK and, on paper, it looked a steal, it came
loaded with everything at a keen price,
There was a big TV ad campaign and I don't think that sales hit four figures.
Even people with pointy heads walked away
after driving the thing. I had one on test for a week and the only thing
I can remember was how horrid was the colour.
Chrysler
planned an assault on Le Mans. In 1928, Chrysler 72s finished third and fourth
so it was a return to a circuit where
they had a good record. The plan was to use a hybrid gas turbine/electric
power system. with KERS.
The main power would be an electric motor, the turbine would generate the
electricity.
The project
was called the Patriot after the defence missile system employed by Israel
during Operation Desert Storm.
Those with long memories may recall photographs of the car at Donington Park.
You may have wondered why it was going
the wrong way round the circuit, it had to go that way because that is the
way of the slope.
On the one occasion that a Chrysler Patriot turned a wheel, it was pushed.
The problem was KERS.
Chrysler
had a facility called 'Liberty' which was supposed to operate on the same
lines as Lockheed's fabled Skunk Works.
It was supposed to be blue sky thinking, zany ideas which might just work.
Lockheed came up with the SR70 'Blackbird' and
Chrysler tried to pass off the Neon as a car.
The Patriot
was to use KERS, a principle familiar to anyone who has owned a friction-driven
toy car. Space satellites have
solar panels which produce electricity and some of that is used to drive
a flywheel via an electric motor. When energy is needed,
as when a satellite is in darkness, the process is put into reverse: the
flywheel then drives an alternator which feeds electrical
power into the system.
Chrysler
believed that this principle had applications for future road cars. Some governments
were beginning to speak
about setting tighter emission laws. We go back more than 15 years, we speak
of The Hole In The Ozone Layer.
That was scary for a while, partly because few of us knew there was an ozone
layer. The Hole In The Ozone Layer is yesterday's
scare story, but it had us worried for a while.
Battery
technology showed no sign of being able to meet the goals governments were
banging on about.
Al Gore Jr. had yet to re-invent himself, eco-warriors did not stake out
his mansion noting how many lights were on.
Chrysler ran with a concept of using a low-emission system fuelled natural
gas which is on tap in many households.
Incidentally, Chrysler had tried gas turbine cars in the 1950s, it supplied
cars to selected customers on much the same basis
as BMW is supplying hydrogen-powered 7-series cars at the present time.
After the announcement, not much more was heard.
Since
the flywheel and gas turbine were known technology, the problem came down
to applying them in a new environment in the
most efficient way. Large corporation met lean motor racing outfit and all
that Adrian Reynard had to work on was a sketch on a
piece of paper. The car required aerospace technology which was not available
in a form which could be used in a car,
but there were lots of dollars on hand and that has often been a short cut
to agreement.
The idea
was that the turbine engine would run at maximum revs (100,000 rpm) all the
time. When the car was under braking,
the turbine would switch to powering the flywheel which would rotate at 80,000
rpm and store the energy.
That energy
could be drawn off, via an alternator, to supplement the power from the turbine
to the electric motor which was
actually propelling the car. In rough terms, if the turbine was producing
500 bhp, which was the target, the flywheel could provide
an extra 200 bhp for ten seconds, 100 bhp for 20 seconds, or 50 bhp for 40
seconds. That could see an overtaking move every
few minutes. The point about the system is that energy is stored every time
a car brakes so the extra power was available every lap.
The turbine
was to provide the energy to the main motive power, an electric motor. Electric
motors have always been superior to
the internal combustion engine, they deliver maximum torque from the start.
The snag has been storing the energy, which generally
means batteries.
There
exist a number of public transport systems which use flywheels to store energy.
There are trams which charge up every time
they stop and the system does away with the need for overhead cables. A tram
is usually in a fairly stable environment, trams tend
not to tackle hills. They are not trams in San Francisco. A gyroscopic system
had to be designed into the Patriot's flywheel and this
by a company which could not make Lamborghinis which did not leak.
Reynard delivered the prototype Patriot in time for Chrysler to feature it on its stand at the 1993 Detroit Motor Show. There had been compromises; the roll bar had to look pretty so, as displayed, the Patriot would not have passed a scrutineer.
That did not matter because the car never ran, not even in a test session, and the problem was KERS.
A flywheel
has to have weight and the Chrysler end of the project came up with one which
weighed 157 lbs and rotated at 80,000 rpm.
There was a snag, if the car went above fifteen degrees from the horizontal,
as over a kerb at Le Mans or on the banking at Daytona,
the flywheel whizzed off.
Can you
imagine how many decapitations could be wrought by an object weighing 157
lbs and rotating at 80,000 rpm?
Chrysler's PR department could always argue in favour of green issues, but
I am not sure if they would be believed by relatives
of those cut in two.
Guys at
Reynard worked over Christmas and the car was delivered in time for the
Detroit Show which opened on 28th April, 1993.
The car could have been delivered earlier, but Chrysler was fussy about the
shade of paint. Forget the illegal roll bar and the flywheel,
Chrysler had to make the car look pretty. This could explain a lot, like
how it screwed owning Lamborghini and being in Formula One.
Reynard
supplied chassis and spares for nearly two and a half years as Chrysler persevered
with the concept, but it could not solve
the basic problem. The flywheel constantly left its moorings and broke through
its carbonfibre casing. It was tested in a lead-lined pit
with a lid weighing several tons. Even then it melted the lining of the pit
- the figures were cyrogenic.
