Going green ain’t easy. Especially so if
you’ve got $10,000+ tied up in a gas-guzzler. But imagine the sweet Xmas
presents you could buy for your loved ones if your car got an extra, oh let’s
say, 25mpg. Why, the difference could be that between a red sock stuffed with
cotton balls and an actual Tickle-Me Elmo! But alas, you’re still making
payments on that sporty [insert any North American automobile here] while the
Johnsons are yukking it up in their Prius, with the latest animatronics to
gyrate out of Sesame Street strapped into the car seat alongside them. If only
there was a way to make the old new again…Enter: The Poulsen Hybrid.
This nifty bit of engineering ingenuity looks
rather like an immobilizer boot strapped onto the wheels of your car (either
both on the front or back, depending on front or rear-wheel drive). The ‘boots’
are in fact electric motors that are bolted onto the wheels, with an
accompanying 4.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack (or lead acid,
depending on the model) that gets stored in the host vehicle’s trunk. According
to Jim Motavalli, writer for The Daily Green and recent visitor of the Bridgeport
Magnetics Group’s hybrid-housing warehouse, “the motors do not drive the car,
but kick in to provide a power boost between 15 and 60 miles per hour. [While]
regenerative braking helps keep the batteries charged.” The design comes from
Ulrik Poulsen (hence the Poulsen Hybrid), founder and CEO of Connecticut-based
Bridgeport Magnetics Group.
According to Motavalli “If the system works
as advertised, a 30-mile-per-gallon car will be raised to 55 mpg.” The Poulsen
method increases efficiency for 25 to 30 miles, at which point the car will
revert back to full reliance on gasoline. Certainly one issue that crops up
when discussing hybrids is how much it actually costs to recharge these bad
boys. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of financial sense if your hydro bill is
going to skyrocket. But, as far as the Poulsen Hybrid is concerned, the cost is
quite negligible; from a household outlet, the process registers at barely $1
for a full recharge.
Sounds almost too good to be true, right?
Well, Poulsen’s position as a startup is certainly going to handicap the deployment
of his hybrid method. The kits have to be installed professionally and can cost
as much as $8,600 for the lithium-ion model. A lead-acid model (we’re talking
batteries here) is anticipated to cost nearly half that price. What’s more,
being a startup, Poulsen can only realistically realize a relatively small customer
base; with an expectation of merely 50 cars equipped with the setup by January.
However, Poulsen is anticipating production to ramp up to 100 units a day by
mid-2009.
Should the Poulsen method become popular,
the limelight would certainly go a long way towards expansion and hopefully a
decrease in cost.
Nevertheless, it’s one giant leap forward towards
salvaging those oil-addicts of yonder years that we’re all so indebted to.
