High Efficiency Digital Displacement Tranny to Double Mileage. Maybe.

Jonny Lieberman
by Jonny Lieberman

The Scotts invented Free Masonery, Scotch and Golf. They then kicked back, cursed the English and watched their American cousins play with the world. Until now. Edinburgh-based Artemis is claiming that they've doubled an internal combustion powered car's mileage. Their new tech– officially launched in 2005– replaces the port and swash plates in a typical slushbox with hydraulics and a computer-controlled solenoid valve system. According to cleantech.com, a "third party" compared a brace of BMW 530is. One sported a five-speed manual, the other Artemis's hydraulic hybrid system. The HEDDAT equipped Bimmer achieved 41.1 mpg (Euro city cycle) and 39.6 mpg on the highway (Euro highway cycle). The system also reduced all-important CO2 emissions by 30 percent. Instead of storing regenerative energy in a battery, hydraulic hybrids store the power hydraulically. That makes "charging" faster. Discharging, too. Also, the harder you drive, the more energy gets stored for later. Exactly the opposite of an electric hybrid, where hard driving tends to create much more energy than can be fed into the battery. Artemis is also claiming their HEDDAT system is cheaper and more durable than an electric hybrid. Artemus has already inked a deal with Bosch to get the Digital Displacement system into on-highway vehicles.

Jonny Lieberman
Jonny Lieberman

Cleanup driver for Team Black Metal V8olvo.

More by Jonny Lieberman

Comments
Join the conversation
4 of 26 comments
  • MrUnexpected MrUnexpected on Jun 12, 2008

    OH NO! I questioned the Toyota KoolAid... ;-) Firstly, talk to me about Prius batteries lasting the lifetime of the car, after they have survived 20 years in Minnesota winters, or Florida heat. Or, for that matter, Indiana's ample supply of both extrmes. 10 years, 150,000 miles WAS a life cycle of a car years ago, now we expect them to go longer. The Prius is about marketing and image, not actual concern for the Earth. Remember, Toyota makes more truck and suv models than anyone, they have to get some green in their image somehow. People know and accept electrical things, they accept e-hybrids. Trying to sell someone a hydraulic car summons thoughts of slow moving, loud garbage trucks and backhoes. Point is, electricity is sexier than hydraulic oil. Toyota is in the buisness of selling cars THAT PEOPLE WILL BUY, not building the best possible cars. If you think that, you are seriously deluded. Hell, most of what makes the prius efficient is the light weight, aerodynamics, efficient engine, and low rolling resistance tires. Tearing that hybrid shit off will net you a small gain in mileage on the highway (less weight), and a rather small drop in city. If you factor in the savings of leaving that stuff off, the non-hybrid prius would be a terrific machien both finaancially and energy/pollution wise. Another aspect of hydraulicsis driveability. Getting smooth, comfortable power out of the hydraulic drive is tricky. And curent off-the-shelf hydraulic drive and pumps are HEAVY, meant for stationary factory work, or on earthmovers and so on. And though your local garbage truck doesnt HAVE to make that horrible squeal, it still wont be silent. It looks like these guys have developed some new gizmos to overcome that. Using the "rougher" off-the-shelf stuff will work fine in commercial applications, and I'll bet you will see it in buses, and trucks once this stuff gets better known. The point is, using current available tech (with respective inefficiencies), for the same or less weight, and for the same or less cost, hydraulics are as good or better. And have less damage to the environment. The point is, just because something is popular, or touted by (almost) everyone, doesn't mean its right. In the 60's EVERYONE KNEW that we were gonna have turbine cars. Its was one the news, car companies had concept cars and prototypes, congress was giving money to develop it, etc.. The age of piston engines was gonna be over in a decade. The fact that every engineering undergrad (let alone real engineer) knew this was BS for various reasons (huge fuel use, major heat generation, and cost) made no difference. Oh wait, yes it did! ;-) And yes, e-hybrids CAN work, assuming some leaps in tech, but then hydraulics can take similar leaps, too. Like super caps, those are cheap and environmentally benign, or at least can be...

  • Scicarb Scicarb on Jun 12, 2008

    Sign me up in support of diverse approaches to the problem. Like MrUnexpectd as an engineering student I too was involved in a college project to evaluate the effectiveness of a gas/electric hybrid versus other options. I worked on an actual prototype for the then resurgent Chrysler Corporation in 1990. We built an electric powertrain to supplement the existing powertrain in a Dodge Omni. It worked but it wasn't that great, but I agree that all the interest was in an electric solution and not a mechanical one. This despite the hundreds of pounds of lead in the batteries we used at the time. Well Ni is less toxic than lead and Li is less toxic than Ni, but the goal is to go further for a given unit of energy. Hydraulic hybrids have been very successful for FedEx and UPS, they make sense in those use cases. In cars it could go either way, but don't doubt that if we presuppose a solution, we'll suffer the consequences.

  • Dhanson865 Dhanson865 on Jun 12, 2008

    @UltimateX, your numbers are a little off. 50-70 is a 20% band. The band is actually supposed to be twice as big for a Prius. I remember hearing 20% to 80% early on in the Prius days but looking for numbers now I'm seeing a narrower band, just not as narrow as you are claiming. The state of charge is allowed to vary only between 40% and 80% of the rated full charge and even that is a rough goal. It could drop below 40% or get charged above 80%, they are after all targets not limits and the charge percentage perceived by the computer may not be computed by the actual capacity of an aged battery. Try googling "prius soc" without the quotes and see what you get.

  • M1EK M1EK on Jun 13, 2008

    MrUnexpected, you need to up your FUD game for this forum - people here are a bit smarter than your usual stomping grounds, it appears. To take just one of the wrong things in your latest comment: no, tearing the hybrid 'shit' off the car wouldn't lead to a small drop in city and a small increase in highway mileage - it would lead to a HUGE drop in city, a small drop in highway mileage, and an inability to sell even one of these things, because although the gas engine is obviously big enough to maintain a highway cruise, it's not big enough to accelerate up to highway speed - not remotely big enough. So, yes, the hybrid battery does help - even on the highway - because it allows for the vehicle to be driven with a much smaller gas engine than people would otherwise be willing to tolerate. It's a GeoMetro sized gas engine driving a practically Camry sized vehicle.

Next