Ingeniously simple, affordable and effective are good descriptions of Mazda’s crafty repurposing of regenerative braking announced last week.
We know regenerative braking from its use in hybrids. A generator in the driveline helps slow the car when the driver steps on the brakes. It’s not exactly a new idea, diesel-electric locomotives have used something quite similar for decades, but then, the nuances of seamlessly smooth braking are not required when trying to stop many millions of pounds from running away in the Rocky Mountains.
The trick in passenger cars has been to seamlessly integrate regenerative braking with the regular service brakes, a refinement that’s taken two generations of software to achieve.
But now that sophisticated regenerative braking is here, why leave it just to hybrids postulates Mazda? Calling their new system i-ELOOP (Intelligent Energy Loop), Mazda has combined regenerative braking with a newly developed capacitor and fitted it to an otherwise standard gasoline drivetrain. The capacitor acts as an electrical bank with the ability to quickly accept large deposits and dole out huge withdrawals—or just a few electrons at a time. But instead of paying its electrical dividends to an electric motor attached to the drive wheels as in a hybrid, i-ELOOP helps power the usual electrical loads such as air conditioning, pumps, headlights, sound system, battery charging and so on. A special 25/12 variable voltage alternator and a converter are also part of i-ELOOP.
With i-ELOOP gaining electrical power with every brake application the alternator works less, providing an approximate 10 percent gain in fuel economy during stop and go driving. The gains are obviously substantially less on the freeway.
While not as effective in power recovery as a hybrid, i-ELOOP is much less expensive (and heavy) because no electric drive motor, water-cooled controller or massive dedicated batteries are required. Mazda says i-ELOOP will appear worldwide on its 2012 models.
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