Converting Gasoline Motors to Electric Motors

Converting the gasoline motor industry into an electric motors industry

Forward
The benefits of a well thought out electric motor still carry a large positive impact to the environment, and economy, even though it is not the perfect solution. That will come in time. I simply wish to divulge to you my thought on how to begin to move the combustion engine industry toward electric motors.

Introduction
In any industry change is difficult. Humans to do very well at creating something, then mass producing it to infinity. As production increases, ways to increase efficiency in making that product, and increase the efficiency of the main product are attacked with ferocity.

For example once the combustion engine was developed, modifications such as the v engine, turbo & twin overhead cams were readily accepted as evolutions of the engine by both manufacturer, and consumer. It was a step at a time.

But if you were to walk up to the design engineers, and propose to take THE most major component, remove it, and replace it with something totally different, panic and loud protests are what you will receive. Such is the problem in the auto industry.

Indeed not just the auto industry, but the consumers as well. You can clearly see this with the Hybrid electric car industry, among others. There is no market domination of these vehicles. Yes, a handful of alternative fuel vehicles have been developed and are marketed. Yes, others are working hydrogen, and pure electric vehicles. And I believe that they will one day completely dominate the automotive market.

For the moment however, I believe that the only quick solution to converting the combustion engine to electric would be to modify an existing combustion engine. It is not necessarily the most modern, or advanced alternative, but minimal retooling for the manufacturers and minimal changes for the consumer is the fastest way to gaining the approval required to be able to effectively change and dominate the market.

I don’t think many people have made a serious and concerted effort at this particular goal yet. Therefore it is my pleasure to help kick start the pursuit of this idea. I am not an engineer, physicist, or organ grinder, so I will need some help with the design of this concept. Any one can contribute where they are able.

Conversion of the combustion motor.
First one has to ask how one can convert an existing combustion motor into an electric motor. Yes, even the one sitting in your car outside in the driveway. To do that you must have a rudimentary knowledge of the motor. So you should briefly educate yourself on its components.

Most people have the general idea. Gas (petro for you frogs) gets pumped into a chamber, which is then ignited, which forces a cylinder down, which turns a crankshaft, which then turns the transmission, which turns the driveshaft, which turns a planetary gear, which turns the wheels. Simple.

So the first step is to figure out how to remove the gas and provide an electric current which will force the piston down instead. Right? With me so far?

What would happen if you removed the piston and instead put a straight rod (say 2 inch diameter x 7 inch length) in its place? And on the outer wall of the block where the piston used to take up the rest of the space, insert a sleeve of coiled copper or aluminum? Now you have a coil of wire with a rod thru the center. Remind you of your elementary classes? You have basically created a solenoid. electronics.howstuffworks.com... Since the rod is attached to the crankshaft, you are on a mobile platform.

If you did this on all 8 cylinders, and provided enough electricity to each cylinder one at a time, in a cycle, fast enough, you would have a running motor. Right?

You would be maintaining the basic platform of the combustion engine that everyone is so familiar with. You would only need to swap a few parts. There are many parts that can now be thrown away. Muffler, there is now no emissions. Heads, you no longer need those 50 lbs blocks of steel with assorted valves and springs to open and close. Intake manifold, this and the carburetor/fuel injection are no longer required. Water pump, and radiator, probably not needed. Gas tank, gone. Camshaft, gone. Starter gone.

This would meet the criteria for the need of minimal retooling on the manufactures part, meet the familiarity requirement on the consumers part, and the conversion to electric motor on the environment/oil dependency part. The reduction of all those non essential components would represent a marked reduction in weight. Weight represents one of the main issues with any transportation vehicle.

I don’t know why I keep saying vehicle. This could be applied to any weed eater, chainsaw, basically any combustion motor use. Don’t you think?

The power source
Now the problem with this design will be how to apply enough power to the new cylinder to create a large enough force to actually move a car. We know that this can be done. Simply look at a mag lift. Or a junkyard elecrtro magnetic crane. Both use electromagnets to move very heavy object. So magnetic properties can carry enough load to move heavy objects.

So the coil of wire will have to withstand a large current load. And that brings us to the crux of the problem. What can provide us with enough electricity to move the new cylinder down over and over at a high rate for a sustained period of time?

I think that the battery tech is out there. I think that the batteries, capacitors, etc are already on the market to provide this high amp current. For example, portable battery chargers are now lightweight, and have high amperage. Coils are developed which deliver more than 500,000 volts at high amps. I think that with the right combination of batteries, capacitors and coils, combined with the reduction of weight, joined with the right recharge system, this can be done.

The average motor will provide approx 3200 ft lb of force. But remember, combustion engines can only force the piston down. By changing the charge of the current back and forth from positive to negative you can force the piston both up and down. All one needs to do is figure out the timing of the firing. You could have each piston being driven up and down all at the same time, instead of one at a time in sequence. Thus multiplying the force. Right? Still with me?


Distributing the current
One has to take into account the firing time for the new cylinders. However we are in luck. A combustion engine has a gear driven distributor already designed for mid size current distribution to the spark plugs. I think that this could fairly easily be modified to handle the larger loads. The rest of the package for timing already exists. During modification you would need to use computers to help with the high speed of the current distribution and the change of current from positive to negative.

Thrust
Your existing combustion motor used a gas pedal attached to a valve that increased or decreased the amount of gas into the motor. This could be modified into a simple potentiometer. Thus increasing or decreasing the amount of current flow to the new pistons. Right?


Sound
You could attach a speaker to the potentiometer/gas pedal to simulate the sound of a motor to help the customer feel more comfortable with the new motor

Cooling
The motor would need to be encased in an oil of some type (hopefully not pcb’s) to keep the temperature low. This should be effective, just as the transformers on the telephone pole are cooled with this method.

Heating the interior of the car
The motor would still produce enough heat to warm the interior of the car. Minor modifications to the exterior of the motor would allow you to trap this heat, and introduce it into the car with the same system that currently exists.

Recharging the batteries
One of the largest problems that manufacturers of electric cars face today is how to recharge those batteries. The common lead acid batteries of today do not take kindly to a regular full discharge, and recharge cycle. However, there are some tricks that are not being commonly used that I would like to see implement on this venture.

For example, the crankshaft, flywheel, tourqe converter, transmission gears, transaxle/driveshaft, planetary gears, and wheels all turn. Heck even the speedometer cable turns. Anything that turns can have a few magnets embedded into it, and a coil of wire wrapped around it to create minor amounts of electrical current. This would act like an alternator, providing a trickle charge to the batterie(s) without adding much weight.

In addition, a small 10 lbs battery booster pack could be kept in the system to help maintain the voltage level of the batteries. Therefore, if one does not fully discharge the battery(s), one could simply swap the battery booster pack and be on their way. This would not fully eliminate the need to plug the car into an outlet for a full recharge on a nightly basis, but it should go a long way toward things like long distance drives. Right?

Conclusion
This is really not the appropriate forum for a 500 page thesis on this conversion, so I have had to leave a lot of details out. Feel free to comment on them if you wish. I would be happy to discuss this idea I have in greater detail.

To the reader
Thanks for taking the time to read this lengthy post. You may wonder why I would post such information in a public forum if there really is the possibility to make it work. Instead, you may feel that I should keep it private, so that I could patent it and be a billionaire.

My answer to that has many faces. I am not a learned man, a design engineer, an electrical engineer, etc. My posting this idea is mostly because of my belief system. I don’t think that being overly rich will help me all that much in this life. It would not prevent injury, illness or death for example.

In addition, I tend to believe in the universal consciousness. That means that I think that there is a lot of information just floating around out there, and that on occasion some of us happen to grasp some of it. Since I obtained this idea via an extraordinarily vivid dream I had one night, my beliefs force me to grasp that others have this same idea, and are working on it now, as you read this.

There will be many who proclaim loudly that it cannot be done for this or that reason. In point of fact, it may not be able to be accomplished. But it is my dream. And maybe, just maybe I have helped inspired someone today with my dream. Perhaps it will spark a memory, which then helps bring this dream into the world of reality.

Somehow though in writing, it is nowhere near as elaborate as in the dream. It is difficult for me to get the concept accross. Much is lost in the translation I am afraid.