<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wiyosaya @ Oct 30 2007, 11:14 AM) [snapback]532451[/snapback]</div>

I'm feeling really under the weather today, and a bit skeptical, too, I suppose...still, F1 has often been fertile ground for engineering developments that might actually reach production cars.

Interesting.

A few questions remain about how quickly the flywheel spins down...if I wait at a traffic light for a few minutes or in a traffic jam for longer, how much energy does it lose after, say, five minutes? Where does it go? Does it turn into, say, heat?

I have a feeling that, in F1, acceleration and deceleration happens more often and more forcefully than on the road (I hope, anyway)...wondering if an F1 car would put in/take out energy from the flywheel lots more frequently than a street car would...so issues of spin-down time don't come into play...(??)

Ugh, back to bed.

Is Torotrak the same as Toro the people who make lawn tractors and gardening stuff? Would this be a first time lawn mower technology has found it's way into formula 1?
I wanted a flywheel in my billycart as a kid but couldn't work out how to hook it to the wheels or how to spin it up to speed.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Oct 30 2007, 07:14 PM) [snapback]532663[/snapback]</div>

No, Torotrak is a engineering firm from the UK that makes CVT tranaxles that achieves infinitely variable ratios by using spheres to transfer power between two disks. Very cool technology.

Interesting. I wonder if this would add much to small-engine high mpg vehicles. The emphasis of the article is high-performance vehicles and high horsepower. Race driving occurs with either full-gas or late near-lockup braking where the flywheel (5 kg only !) keeps spinning to add to the violent acceleration out of a corner. This makes sense, but whether it takes away from regen braking like in the Prius or spins down sitting at a 3-minute long red light, I question.
That a 5 kg flywheel can significantly help a 1500 kg vehicle accelerate from a standing start seems amazing.