Posted by J.M. Kafes on March 20, 2004 at 13:36:15:
In Reply to: Re: Wind powered car? posted by Brian Smith on June 30, 2003 at 16:10:31:
Brian, although I'm not an engineer, I need you to clarify for me what your underlying assumption is regarding your statement: "The fraction added and subtracted by wind will generally sum to zero as you drive in random directions."
From my non-engineering perspective, it doesn't matter what direction the car is driving in; relative wind is being created as the car moves, and a windmill mounted on the roof of a car I would think should be able to capture that. A normal windmill would go nuts with power generation capacity with 20 mile per hour winds, and cars can create relative wind environments of 60 miles per hour.