During this series on green/sustainable living, I’ve talked about various types of cars: electric cars, biodiesel cars, wind-powered cars, and even cars fueled by pee.
But how about a car powered by people? It gives new meaning to the term “Power to the People.”
Well, there is a car that fits that description. It’s called the HumanCar.
Now, when you think of a car, you probably include things like an engine, or at least a motor, gasoline, even batteries. But what if there could be a car powered entirely by human motion; one that did not need an engine, fuel, batteries, or even electricity?
That, my friends, is the HumanCar, and the Human Car, Inc. company, located in Oregon and founded by engineer Chuck Greenwood, are developing these new models of transportation.
HumanCar is exactly what it sounds like: a car (well, it has four wheels, at least) powered by people. The HumanCar FM4 (pictured above) has seats for four; the passengers “rock it like an engine,” which roughly equates to pushing and pulling on the amber-handled levers to generate speed (up to 60 mph, going downhill) and leaning to turn.
It’s street-legal, so try to not to act too surprised when one of these cars pulls up to you at a stop light.
Technically, according to the company, the HumanCar is powered by a simple yet robust control system. Conventional mini-contactors connect both motors in parallel for acceleration. Alternatively, they are reconnected in series when the brake lever is actuated. This creates a much higher output voltage that is temporarily stored in a small bank of ultracapacitors, and then re-regulated down nominal storage battery voltage.
The high end state-of-the-art system, the Imagine LMV HumanCar pictured above, uses a pair of 3 phase AC frameless motors along with a special controller adapted from machine tool industry, and 200 VDC NiMH batteries (or Lithium Ion if functional and available).
Check out the HumanCar FM4 in action in the above video, and you’ll see how well and fast it can move. Then get together a couple of your friends and go for a test drive yourselves.
To find out more, you can go to the HumanCar website, or to their Facebook page.