It's hard for me to say at this point, because I haven't done all possible calculations, but it appears that the Urbee may be a little underpowered. The ultracapacitor may add more power in short bursts than the 16 hp that the article I linked to yesterday. In order to get 0-60 mph in 12 seconds ( an arbitrary number that I just pulled out of a hat ), you'd probably want about 32 kw of power for that mass, or about twice the power for the battery/diesel combo.
Now, there has to be a disclaimer here, since I don't do this for a living. Okay, that 32 kw may not be gospel, ok?
I considered if there may be an advantage to using fuel cells. It probably won't be worth it in terms of saving weight. At 1200 lbs, the Urbee is already too light to be considered an automobile. There may be ways to reduce the weight further, like using fuel cells and maybe some carbon fiber all over the place, but it may not be worth it really.
I thought I'd show my work to consider whether a 300 mpg claim can be made. In the chart below, it can be seen, or I hope it can be seen, that the diesel engine will have to be as efficient as the battery in order to get a little over 200 mpg equivalent. That is probably not likely.
It is also possible that I'm full of it because I made a mistake somewhere. Like I said, I don't do this for a living.
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| Energy calculations for the Urbee 2 concept car |
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