There are much better things they can be learning on, much bigger fish to fry. If an engineering student can't think of anything better than we are going nowhere. A junior high student should be able to throw that together.

You can't even call that a hybrid for starters as it's more of a simple twin power system... if you are going to put in effort to put that together, why not use a smaller 4-stroke rc engine on a small BL motor, generating power for a small charging circuit to charge a low impedance battery pack... to power the motor. That would at least be worth the effort. People have lost their ingenuity and originality these days sorry to say. I might be tired but that is the way I feel. :neutral::sleep:

But but but, hybrid cars have been around for years, and Mike already makes really great centerdiff motor mounts :lol:

If this was ~10-15 years ago then I'd say it was really interesting and had lots of potential for scaling up, but its all been done before & probably better executed... :neutral: ( I think thats why alot are viewing it as pointless ).

First off ...I wasn't comparing the college students projects to mike's business.....i was just stating that this is a pretty creative project and we all should at least be supporting these types of projects...it's thinking outside of the box...and creating things just to prove that it can be done and because it's FUN! and gets today's youth involved...and if anything, will further support the known fact that brushless is far more efficient and powerful than nitro.......Why build an electric e-revo with a remotely fired paintball gun mounted to the top?...Why build an emaxx/lawnmower? why build a brushless barbie jeep?...BECAUSE ITS FUN! :).some of you guys on here are bashing this project and questioning the validity of why they made this nitro/electric hybrid RC however, I think you're all missing the point of why I posted this project....RC's are supposed to be FUN! I think most of you will agree that building/creating new things is almost as much fun as driving it.....but of course...everyone is entitled to their own opinion.... :) NOt trying to start a "this project is stupid why build it" thread :yes:

Calculators have been around forever too - might as well take all the math out of schools and just give the kids calculators. Skip teaching your kids to walk - its much less efficient than having them run.
I dont believe the exercise they did was worth an article in a magazine (or website), but it was still a fundamental teaching exercise.

ZPbug said there should be better things they could be designing - sure there are. But its the hands on experience that these kids need. Most engineers wouldn't know a 1/2 inch wrench from a pair of vice grips due to a significant lack of hands on training. And with funding problems, putting together a full size car may have been cost prohibitive. Maybe, this is just a precurser for a later project of something more applicable to whatever technology they are trying to achieve.

The truth of it is, none of us know the full picture or scope of what they are trying to learn.

I don't know, I guess I just have the attitude that 'most' engineering students don't even know what they are doing, or getting into. Most don't even really enjoy it, or have a passion for it... if you don't have a passion for what you are doing, you SHOULD NOT be doing it, most can agree with me on that I think? But, as well, this really does happen more than you realize, to the majority of people, IMO.

I guess I am being a little harsh as well... we don't even know how old these students are that put this 'thing' together... are they 2nd year students? 3rd? 4th?

I think that sums it up. Could the project have been engineered more like a real hybrid? Yes. But the electronics and engineering for implementing that would've been alot more complex and probably not within the scope of the project.

Quote from the website: "Earlier this year, Pro-Line was approached for a special project by a University of Kansas senior named Will Pro who is studying Mechanical Engineering.

The design project is entitled the KU “EcoHawks,” and it involved the designing, building, and testing of small-scale remote-controlled vehicles. His group designed a 1:8 scale parallel hybrid vehicle.

Pro-Line was commissioned to provide a few sets of tires, wheels and a body for static/kinetic friction coefficient comparisons, as well as drive train efficiency comparisons and wind tunnel comparisons."

So the student was a senior. The project was to create a 1/8 vehicles, and they are testing drivetrain efficiency, static/kinetic friction coefficients, doing windtunnel testing etc. So I doubt the students or the teacher where looking for any groundbreaking designs here. They were simply looking for a working vehicle, a complete analysis of its performance, and presumably a paper on it as well. Clearly not a design competition, just create a test mule and test it. This one got press because someone asked for Prolines help and they thought it was the coolest one to put on their website.

Is it useless to an RC enthusiast who just wants to drive? Most definitely. Is it a cool tool to learn about designing around problems, testing various factors of a vehicles perfromance, while playing with rc for a school project? Most definitely. :yes:

Again, because of the simplicity of the project, why do it at all? You could spend a moment in your mind and predict the outcome...

Besides, scale working such as these SIMPLY don't compare to making the full scale thing... ask the "Myth Busters" on that one, many of their scale experiments turned out different results than the real thing.

I think your missing the point zero...these students made the car to get real-world results in the testing of the drive train efficiency friction coeff blah blah blah etc etc...in an 1/8th scale hybrid.....sure it would be simple on paper and just coming up with the results in your head...but where's the fun in that?...and I hardly think this design is simple...the concept may be simple but the actual build , IMHO, was not a simple thing to do....or it just may be that I lack the tools, knowledge, and know how to view this project as "simple"...I get jammed up trying to fabricate a battery tray...lol... :)

Damn, people, it was just a college project...give them a friggin' break!

If it was an assignment, they had to do it, and they may have chosen to work with an RC car because one/some/all of them were into RC cars. Plus, it could have been a college where money actually was an object, so they used an RC car instead of a real car because it's what they could afford.

I don't know how many of you have college degrees, or even went to college, but when these types of assignments come along, it's not usually about *real-world* use or production, it's only about proof of concept, which is exactly what this group of students and hybrid RC car did, they proved the concept.

Explain this: How can they measure all this drivetrain efficiency and aero's, and blah blah blah? How does this corrospond to anything real world or of scale, after all what realworld car has MASSIVELY over sized differentials like RC, or dry run gears, or foam filled tires, or made of plastic, etc, etc.

I don't even know why I am debating this really. :mdr:

AGAIN! IT IS NOT A TRUE HYBRID!

Where is the generation back into the battery going? :neutral::no:

You know what zero...you win...this thread was not intended to get people all riled up over the validity of this project......the simple truth of the matter was the students were given a task...and they completed the task whether or not if it's efficient or Less efficient or not :) and I think that it's pretty cool that a college level project involved an 1/8th scale buggy .... And how they did it intrigued me enough to the point wherein I just had to share this projet with fellow RCM'ers... :)

I don't think I was alone in my opinion was I?

Nope, not alone. :yes:

Everyone has their right to their own opinion on this thread. Neither side is going to convince the other.

Personally I think it was a lame project an 8th grade JH class could do, others disagree. I have seen many college level tech projects of the years on the net which used an RC car so this is nothing new either. Heck BPRevo did this just recently and I really believe what he had to do was much more complicated and note worthy.

There is no reason for anyone to get up in arms over it. I highly doubt ZP or Neil are angry and neither am I. Post something on a public forum you get an opinion. I think all in all this was pretty civil. :whistle:

Remember in the end ALL opinions are like buttholes..............even your own. :diablo::na:

Yeah..I'm not angry either and I assume the others who posted in this thread were not either...it is everyone own opinion and it's cool that we can all debate/discuss things like this in a civilized manner :) unlike some other forums where it becomes a flame fest....as for the project, I think it's cool ...;)

That's my point exactly, If it were to be a true hybrid, there would be some sort of combining system for both to run with. As it sits, they are seperate using different channels and no mixing. I would have to rate it a c- Due to i would expect more tech from college students