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Hybrid Bicycles May One Day Power City Buses
In the future, tiny bike and the hulking city bus -- currently mortal enemies -- may actually be on the same team.
Designer Chiyi Chen's Hybrid2 bike concept is intended to allow the human energy exerted on rented bikes to power fleets of city buses, sans fuel. Essentially, the hybrid rental bikes would work much like hybrid cars: a regenerative braking system would preserve energy for later use. But in this case, said energy wouldn't be used to power the bike. The electricity stored on the bike would be downloaded back into the energy grid later, where it would provide power to the hybrid bus system.
Another nice detail: users would have a special RFID card to keep track of who was using which bike and to monitor each rider's energy savings -- those able to build up enough credit could ride the bus for free.
It's folks like Chen who are going to save us from eating ourselves one day. Bravo. [From: Engadget]
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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsWish BelkinJul 19th 2009 6:43PM
"It's folks like Chen who are going to save us from eating ourselves one day."
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I don't care how clever his invention is, it'll never take the place of tasty people.
JaQuintonJul 19th 2009 10:56PM
Lol, I agree man, but this could not only prove useful in huge cities but imagine taking this ideal and applying it to the college campus. And not just for buses, but classes and dorms too.
Or maybe im being too overly ambitious.
DougJul 20th 2009 12:16AM
Let's apply a little simple engineering to see this is not a reasonable idea. A strong cyclist (not your average commuter) can put out 250 watts for four hours to generate one kwh worth about 10 cents on the power grid. One kwh is equivalent to 80 hp for one minute. Your four hours of hard cycling would probably power the bus for less than one minute. This estimate assumes all your power output, not just the braking, would be saved.