Gadgetory

of that roughly 70% of your car's fuel that is wasted about 85% of that goes out as heat exhaust systems grills ducts radiators coolant plumbing and fans they're all over your car just to get rid of heat but heat is Just Energy why waste it why not convert it that's what car makers are seeking to do via two main strategies the first is around the thermoelectric effect that occurs when connected materials react differently to heat creating an electronic differential between them that generates current spacecraft have long used this to generate electricity from the sun's rays an example is BMWs work on thermoelectric generators that capture the heat in the cars exhaust system to make electricity in a solid-state manner a 7-series for example needs up to a thousand watts of electrical power while running any of that demand you can offload from the alternator saves gas researchers at Boise State University along with Robert Bosch Honda and the Oak Ridge National Labs are working under an eight million dollar federal grant to create better thermoelectric generators by using nanomaterials they hope to improve vehicle energy efficiency by a solid five percent now another main thrust is turbines Ford is keen on using exhaust heat to warm up fluid that creates vapor pressure to spin a turbine generator and make electricity sort of like a mini nuclear power plant without the nuclear part BMWs turbo steamer project is similar and they say it'll be on the market in around six years they're seeing up to a fifteen percent improvement in test vehicles but are hoping to get a solid 10 percent in the real world on longer steady drives now the real keys to all these technologies are threefold first prove their efficiency gains in real-world driving next get the size of the mechanisms down so they fit in small cars where efficiency is often more prized than larger ones and of course manage the cost so the fuel savings are not overshadowed by the price of the ten more car tech demystified right now at CNET on cars comm click on car tech 101