CARS OF FUTURE

               CARS OF THE FUTURE 

''Part of a car's bodywork could one day double up as its battery'' according to the scientists behind a new £ 3.4 million project announced recently.

Researchers from Imperial College London and their European partners, including Volvo Car Corporation, are developing a prototype material which can store and discharge electrical energy and which is also strong and lightweight enough to be used for car parts.

Ultimately, they expect that this material could be used in hybrid petrol/electric vehicle to make them lighter, more compact and more energy efficient, enabling drivers to travel for longer distances before needing to recharge their cars.

In addition, researcher believe the material, which has been patented by Imperial, could potentially be used for the casings of many everyday objects such as mobile phone and computers, so that they would not need a separate battery. This would make such devices smaller, more lightweight and more portable.

The project coordinator, Dr. Emile Greenhalgh, from the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College London, says:

''We think the car of the future could be drawing power from its roof, its bonnet or even the door, thanks to our new composite material.''

In the new project, the scientists are planning to develop the composite material so that it can be used to replace metal flooring in the car boot, called the wheel well, which hold the spare wheel. Volvo is investigating the possibility of fitting this wheel well component into prototype cars for testing purposes.

They believe this could lead to a 15 percent reduction in the car's overall weight, which should significantly improve the range of the future hybrid cars.Current hybrid cars consist of a internal combustion engine, which is used when the driver accelerates the car, and an electrical motor powered by batteries, which turn on when the car cruising. The car need large number of batteries to power the electrical motor, which make the vehicle heavier, meaning that the car uses up more energy and the batteries need regular recharging at short intervals.

The researchers say that the composite material that they are developing, which is made of carbon fibers and  a polymer resin, will store discharge large amounts of energy much more quickly than conventional batteries. In addition, the material does not use chemical process, making it quicker to recharge than conventional batteries.Further more,this recharging process cause little degradation in the composite material, because it does not involve a chemical reaction, whereas conventional batteries degrade over time.

The material could be charge by plugging a hybrid car into household power supply. The researcher are also exploring other alternative for charging it such as recycling energy created when a car brakes.The scientists are planning to improve the material's mechanical properties by growing carbon nano tubes  on the surface of the carbon fibers,which should also increase the surface are of the material, which would improve it  its capacity to store more energy.They are also planning to investigate the most effective method for manufacturing the composite material at an industrial level.

SAURABH KUMAR

ME 2ND YEAR