Video: Compressed Air Powers Hybrid Engine

Freescale Semiconductor demonstrated an air-electric hybrid at the recent Convergence 2012 conference in Detroit.

Charles Murray

November 5, 2012

1 Min Read
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Freescale Semiconductor showed off a unique hybrid powertrain that combines an air engine with an electric motor assist at the recent Society of Automotive Engineers Convergence 2012 conference in Detroit.

"It's our version of a zero emissions vehicle," Neil Krohn of Freescale Semiconductor told us. The engine and electric assist could be used to power a small vehicle.

As you can see in this video, Freescale starts the air engine with the electric motor and then employs the motor's power again when the situation calls for it. "We bring the electric motor in and overdrive the engine, so now we have an assist for acceleration," Krohn said.

The electronics used to run the hybrid powertrain include a Power Architecture microcontroller, insulated gate bipolar transistors, and gate drive ICs from Freescale, as well as a 40kW inverter from Fuji Electric.

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About the Author

Charles Murray

Charles Murray is a former Design News editor and author of the book, Long Hard Road: The Lithium-Ion Battery and the Electric Car, published by Purdue University Press. He previously served as a DN editor from 1987 to 2000, then returned to the magazine as a senior editor in 2005. A former editor with Semiconductor International and later with EE Times, he has followed the auto industry’s adoption of electric vehicle technology since 1988 and has written extensively about embedded processing and medical electronics. He was a winner of the Jesse H. Neal Award for his story, “The Making of a Medical Miracle,” about implantable defibrillators. He is also the author of the book, The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer, published by John Wiley & Sons in 1997. Murray’s electronics coverage has frequently appeared in the Chicago Tribune and in Popular Science. He holds a BS in engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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