ESE Electrical Propulsion System
Published 2006, C-Prompt.com, re: ESE Engine System Pat. App. 096,826
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” — Henry David Thoreau.
Decades ago, while still in college, I invented and designed a highly efficient electric car that used a flywheel for energy-demand-smoothing and storage. I called it the ESE system. It had an extended range for its time, a small gas-powered range extender generator for backup power, and a zinc-air battery option.
I acquired investors and started a tiny company to build a prototype using a gutted Chevy Nova in a defunct gas station we rented in North Jersey. This was during what was called the oil crisis when OPEC flexed its muscles, and the world trembled. There was rationing of gas and lines at gas stations that ran around the block.
There were many companies developing e-cars during this early wave of electrification. The move was driven largely by repeated oil shortages instead of pollution. My reason for developing and promoting electric cars was environmental. The irony of building an electric car in a closed gas station was not lost on anyone, especially me.
The emotionally charged experience of building that electric car has stayed with me my entire life. I had millionaire backers. Patents were filed. Washington expressed interest. Even some of the big three car companies expressed interest. Then the “oil crisis” ended, the funds dried up, and the small company I started closed. No one was interested in electric cars for environmental reasons. Those with the power to make things happen only saw electric cars through the eyes of the wealth that could be made during the oil crisis. They did not care that we were killing the planet.
Now, many decades later, the engineering of my ESE electric car engine system has grown quite dated, even a little Rube Goldberg, but my enthusiasm for e-cars has not diminished. I’ve been driving electric since 2013. In March 2023, I wrote an op-ed/essay about how electric cars and changes to our commuter culture could be the solution to car pollution that does not require large infrastructure projects and changes.
The following material about my ESE Electric Car system is an excerpt from my old C-Prompt.com website, circa 2006. CPrompt was the consulting and software development company that I founded and successfully operated until February 2011, when I lost my first wife, Mazelle, to pancreatic cancer at a tragically young age.
Excerpt: Electric vehicles are the future of green technology for road transportation, with plug-in hybrids serving as bridge technology. I have a long history with EV design. Electric cars have been a viable alternative to fossil fuels for over 100 years. In the year 1900, twenty-eight percent of all cars sold in the United States were electric. Electric cars came before gas cars. The first crude electric carriage was developed in 1832, about 50 years before the gas car.
The infrastructure to deliver electricity currently exists; it’s called your wall outlet. A simple 120V outlet can deliver more energy per day than the average person needs for driving. The same cannot be said for other green options, such as hydrogen.
The roadway leading up to today is littered with sensible viable designs for electric and hybrid vehicles, which were ignored because we leave innovation to the whims of market forces. We did not always do this. Think about NASA and the Apollo Project, the Manhattan Project, the Internet, and the list goes on. As a business owner, I am obviously not against the free enterprise system, but when critical safety, health, or national factors are in play, relying 100% on free market forces to pick winners and losers often catastrophically fails us. This is especially true when dealing with large entrenched interests that radically tip the balance of control over “innovation” into their court; these interests, in effect, become gatekeepers.
The historic cause of EV delay after delay has been very effective roadblocks erected by those with vested interests in the status quo. The problem was never technology. If we want solutions and want to be globally competitive and care for the environment, we need to enable our small innovative companies with a Manhattan-Project-like government program. If this is not done, in my experience, the vehicles which will be developed and offered for sale in the next decade will have no positive material impact on our environment or economy. In this new century, we need to be nimble and not a sleeping giant. In the long run, survival always favors the small and adaptable over the large and lumbering dinosaurs.
Before GM built and then killed the electric car (EV1), I developed an advanced viable electric car drive system at my first company KJB Research Labs Inc. The ESE Engine system was a computer-controlled electrical drive system specifically designed for full electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars. This system was far ahead of its time. Multiple microprocessors were used to control all aspects of operation of both the electrical engine system and the vehicle, which included kinetic energy storage and smoothing, regenerative braking, an infinitely variable magnetic power coupling, and a gas-powered generator for extended range.
The engine incorporated one or more integral flywheels as an energy reservoir. The flywheel and stator form a single integrated part inside the electric engine. A computer-controlled electromagnetic clutch (coupling) is used to transfer energy from the flywheel, applying it to the vehicle’s wheels through a variable ratio transmission. Altering the transmission ratio controls the speed of the vehicle. Regenerative braking is used to reclaim some of the energy typically lost during decelerations.
By smoothing and augmenting power demands with kinetic energy in the flywheel and by computer controlling all aspects of vehicle operations: throttle, braking, climate control, headlights, aerodynamics, etc… the effective range of the vehicle was maximized for all existing battery technologies.
© copyright 2006, Kevin Bohacz, CPrompt.