Core77

Toyota Demonstrates Amount of Energy Recovered Through Regenerative Braking By Using Racecar to Power Breakfast Preparation

We know you had to read the headline twice, but what can we say, that's what happened

By Rain Noe - October 9, 2015

in Cars | Tech

There are two Toyota stories in the news right now, and we're guessing they only want you to hear about one of them. The one we assume they'd rather go unnoticed is about government bodies asking why Toyotas are so popular with ISIS members. (I had a couple of jokes written here on this topic, but as I submit this post I find myself too chicken to taunt a violent extremist group and have deleted them.)

The second, more pleasant story is to do with Toyota's Barista project, which has to do with regenerative braking. It takes a lot of energy to move an automobile from a dead stop up to speed, and once we hit the brakes, all of that energy is lost and turned into useless heat in the brake pads. Thus manufacturers have been looking at regenerative braking systems to recover that energy and pump it back into acceleration.

The Barista project is meant to illustrate just how much energy they're able to recover. Thus they took their TS040 Hybrid racecar, had it run a simulated lap of Le Mans complete with acceleration and braking, and had their Kinetic Energy Recovery System feed the regained juice back into a bunch of electric appliances producing breakfast. Yes, breakfast. Here are the results:

Enter a caption (optional)

You have to admit that one cup of coffee, a third of a fried egg and half a piece of toast each for 171 people does paint a clearer picture than saying that the KERS recovered "Six million joules." And once their engineers have fine-tuned KERS through the brutal rigors of endurance racing, we expect to see a version of it popping up in consumer-level cars, fulfilling its original purpose: To store it in a battery, to be used to help the car accelerate again. There may not be coffee and fried eggs, but there's sure to be a savings at the pump.

o

Favorite This
Q
3

Comment

Comments

matt d

9 years ago

Z

3Z

Reply

the video is sensation bs, it would take over 10 million joules alone to heat 170 cups of water through a perfect process, let alone cook eggs and toast...

barring the fact that none of what you saw in the video actually happened, the exhaust note on the car would've exploded the ear drums of everyone in the room and given a healthy dose of cancer from the race gas-laden toast and eggs.

!Report as spam
Patrick Andrews

9 years ago

Z

1Z

Reply

The acting alone makes this unwatchable, even before consideration of the thermodynamics. Recovered energy still needs to be converted during which process a huge fraction is wasted before your battery is charged (or your coffee lightly warmed).

!Report as spam
Jonas Eriksson

9 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

From the bottom of the homepage:

Our calculations:
*1: One coffee siphon energy usage per second (with 80°C hot water): 350W=350 joules / time to make 3 cups of coffee: about 5 minutes / number of cups: 6,000,000 ÷ (350x300) x 3 = 171.4cups/lap

*2: One toaster energy usage per second: 800W=800 joules / time to make 2 slices of toast: about 3 minutes / number of slices: 6,000,000 ÷ (800x180) x 2 = 83.3 slices/lap

*3: One IH heating plate energy usage per second: 1300W / time to make one fried egg: about 1 minute and 20 seconds / number of fried eggs: 6,000,000 ÷ (1300x80) = 57.7 eggs/lap

*4: The morning breakfast plate shown in the clip is based on the energy recovered in three laps of the Le Mans circuit.

*Note: the race car that appears in the video varies slightly from the actual race car.

!Report as spam