Clockwork cars – why not?
Discussion
Like many on here (I imagine) I look at quite a few different forums. It's amazing how easy it is to find something interesting enough to waste the time you should be using for work.
Through PH I've become quite interested in watches and have now branched off into watch repair videos on YT which really are top quality time wasters.
I've been wondering whether there could be some crossover tech between cars and watches, to whit, the adoption of clockwork as an auxiliary power source. We're always being told about the special steels that go into modern cars so I'm wondering if one of these could be used to create a large but light and powerful mainspring under the floor somewhere, atop or beneath the battery pack in your EV or on its own under the floor in an ICE car. You'd engage clock drive as a slow-release power source once a suitable cruising speed had been achieved. An automatic watch style movement that generates its own winding action through movement would seem to be perfectly suited to motoring but clearly I am not an engineer. No doubt someone who is will tell me that it would never be efficient enough even on suitably slippery-shaped cars with low friction tyres, but is that true? EVs are still burning through electricity when cruising whereas clockwork would seem to be free energy and of course 100% clean.
Fire away with your Noddy car and 'where do you put the winding key' comments.
Through PH I've become quite interested in watches and have now branched off into watch repair videos on YT which really are top quality time wasters.
I've been wondering whether there could be some crossover tech between cars and watches, to whit, the adoption of clockwork as an auxiliary power source. We're always being told about the special steels that go into modern cars so I'm wondering if one of these could be used to create a large but light and powerful mainspring under the floor somewhere, atop or beneath the battery pack in your EV or on its own under the floor in an ICE car. You'd engage clock drive as a slow-release power source once a suitable cruising speed had been achieved. An automatic watch style movement that generates its own winding action through movement would seem to be perfectly suited to motoring but clearly I am not an engineer. No doubt someone who is will tell me that it would never be efficient enough even on suitably slippery-shaped cars with low friction tyres, but is that true? EVs are still burning through electricity when cruising whereas clockwork would seem to be free energy and of course 100% clean.
Fire away with your Noddy car and 'where do you put the winding key' comments.
I don't like to dismiss things out of hand, and it's Friday afternoon, so:
(1) This is no way "free energy". The spring is just storing the (considerable, see below) energy that's been used to wind it up.
(2) As an energy store, let's take a moderate EV battery of 50kWh. This equates to 180,000,000 (1.8x10^8) joules. The movement inside a watch stores a little over 1 joule (https://www.iwc.com/en/articles/experiences/the-watch-mainspring-all-wound-up.html). So that's well over 100 million watch mainsprings you'll need to store the energy.
(3) A steel spring stores approx. 0.1Wh/kg (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-possible-to-store-electrical-energy-as-spring-potential-energy). To get to 50kWh, that's 500 tons of steel you're carrying about.
(4) Your coiled spring will need to be contained by an exceptionally strong casing. And somehow the energy will need to be smoothly released in precisely controllable amounts. I'm no engineer but this sounds quite hard.
(5) I don't know what 180 million joules of kinetic energy looks like. I suspect it's quite impressive. If whatever containment medium you have your mainspring in was to suddenly fail, you've suddenly got quite a large and unpleasantly sharp bomb going off in the middle of town.
So, all in all, it doesn't really sound much like a goer to me and Noddy is just going to have to pay for his petrol like everybody else.
(1) This is no way "free energy". The spring is just storing the (considerable, see below) energy that's been used to wind it up.
(2) As an energy store, let's take a moderate EV battery of 50kWh. This equates to 180,000,000 (1.8x10^8) joules. The movement inside a watch stores a little over 1 joule (https://www.iwc.com/en/articles/experiences/the-watch-mainspring-all-wound-up.html). So that's well over 100 million watch mainsprings you'll need to store the energy.
(3) A steel spring stores approx. 0.1Wh/kg (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-possible-to-store-electrical-energy-as-spring-potential-energy). To get to 50kWh, that's 500 tons of steel you're carrying about.
(4) Your coiled spring will need to be contained by an exceptionally strong casing. And somehow the energy will need to be smoothly released in precisely controllable amounts. I'm no engineer but this sounds quite hard.
(5) I don't know what 180 million joules of kinetic energy looks like. I suspect it's quite impressive. If whatever containment medium you have your mainspring in was to suddenly fail, you've suddenly got quite a large and unpleasantly sharp bomb going off in the middle of town.
So, all in all, it doesn't really sound much like a goer to me and Noddy is just going to have to pay for his petrol like everybody else.
The French tried compressed air for a while:
https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-31279020...
But the problem I see is the massive pent-up energy potential. With compressed air, its explosive. With clockwork, its that spring. Something breaks or goes wrong, its particularly nasty. At least with dino-juice, it can be nasty but usually its just a fire which you can get away from pretty quickly. Even batteries carry an energy release issue if you arent careful.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-31279020...
But the problem I see is the massive pent-up energy potential. With compressed air, its explosive. With clockwork, its that spring. Something breaks or goes wrong, its particularly nasty. At least with dino-juice, it can be nasty but usually its just a fire which you can get away from pretty quickly. Even batteries carry an energy release issue if you arent careful.
deckster said:
I don't like to dismiss things out of hand, and it's Friday afternoon, so:
(1) This is no way "free energy". The spring is just storing the (considerable, see below) energy that's been used to wind it up.
(2) As an energy store, let's take a moderate EV battery of 50kWh. This equates to 180,000,000 (1.8x10^8) joules. The movement inside a watch stores a little over 1 joule (https://www.iwc.com/en/articles/experiences/the-watch-mainspring-all-wound-up.html). So that's well over 100 million watch mainsprings you'll need to store the energy.
(3) A steel spring stores approx. 0.1Wh/kg (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-possible-to-store-electrical-energy-as-spring-potential-energy). To get to 50kWh, that's 500 tons of steel you're carrying about.
(4) Your coiled spring will need to be contained by an exceptionally strong casing. And somehow the energy will need to be smoothly released in precisely controllable amounts. I'm no engineer but this sounds quite hard.
(5) I don't know what 180 million joules of kinetic energy looks like. I suspect it's quite impressive. If whatever containment medium you have your mainspring in was to suddenly fail, you've suddenly got quite a large and unpleasantly sharp bomb going off in the middle of town.
So, all in all, it doesn't really sound much like a goer to me and Noddy is just going to have to pay for his petrol like everybody else.
Brilliant. I intuitively thought it would require a massive spring. And imagine if two cars collided. Those springs are going to result in entertainment.(1) This is no way "free energy". The spring is just storing the (considerable, see below) energy that's been used to wind it up.
(2) As an energy store, let's take a moderate EV battery of 50kWh. This equates to 180,000,000 (1.8x10^8) joules. The movement inside a watch stores a little over 1 joule (https://www.iwc.com/en/articles/experiences/the-watch-mainspring-all-wound-up.html). So that's well over 100 million watch mainsprings you'll need to store the energy.
(3) A steel spring stores approx. 0.1Wh/kg (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-possible-to-store-electrical-energy-as-spring-potential-energy). To get to 50kWh, that's 500 tons of steel you're carrying about.
(4) Your coiled spring will need to be contained by an exceptionally strong casing. And somehow the energy will need to be smoothly released in precisely controllable amounts. I'm no engineer but this sounds quite hard.
(5) I don't know what 180 million joules of kinetic energy looks like. I suspect it's quite impressive. If whatever containment medium you have your mainspring in was to suddenly fail, you've suddenly got quite a large and unpleasantly sharp bomb going off in the middle of town.
So, all in all, it doesn't really sound much like a goer to me and Noddy is just going to have to pay for his petrol like everybody else.
The most powerful coiled springs I've ever worked with are in old-fashioned wind-up gramophones. A real struggle to wind it into its barrel (casing), and enough power to rip your fingers off if you slip.
The end result of all that stored power is enough energy to rotate a record turntable for about 10 minutes.
A clockwork bicycle might be feasible, but it would be less efficient than pedalling due to frictional losses in the spring "motor".
The end result of all that stored power is enough energy to rotate a record turntable for about 10 minutes.
A clockwork bicycle might be feasible, but it would be less efficient than pedalling due to frictional losses in the spring "motor".
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