In this story I wrote for the Daily Green, I was originally enamored with Porsche’s electric car dreams with a race car. Now, while doing a flywheel works somewhat well for a race car, my complain was that what about the rest of us. I mean come up with a technology that will do the job like all electric. If anyone could do it Porsche could so I wanted to make the point.
The GT has two electric motors to create an electric load of 60 kilkowatts (kW), which supplements the 480 horsepower, naturally aspirated four-liter flat-six that drives the rear wheels. The big thing too is that Porsche is using an electrical flywheel power generator to deliver energy to the electric motors. A flywheel is a fast-moving rotor that can be used as an efficient energy storage device. They are not subject to effects from temperature the way batteries are, and they are not made of toxic materials. Flywheels were invented long ago, but they have thus far seen rather limited applications, including in space technology (although Formula One approved their use in 2009).
