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Schedule for this lecture.

Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium

Date: Monday, May 11, 1998

Title: Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Bane in 1973, Boon in 1998

Speaker: Victor Wouk

Abstract

The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), a combination of electric motor, batteries, and an internal combustion engine in a car, was first conceived and built almost a century ago.  The hybrid solves the range problem of the EV as the batteries can be charged while the vehicle is moving.  The HEV emissions, although not zero, can be made so low that unburned hydrocarbons, for example, may be lower than background levels.  A high-performance, low-emissions HEV was demonstrated at the EPA's Emissions Laboratory in 1974, but its excellent promise was not recognized until it resurfaced in 1993 with the advent of the Administration's PNGV (Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles) program.  It is now realized that in the foreseeable future, the only vehicle that can meet the goal of 80-mpg rating, ultra-low emissions, excellent performance, and cost competition with conventional vehicles is the HEV.  HEV configurations fall into two basic kinds: series and parallel.  The TOYOTA Prius, announced in October 1997, is one type of parallel hybrid.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Victor Wouk has been Technical Advisor to the U. S. National Committee of the International Electrotechnical Commission for ELECTRIC AND HYBRID ROAD VEHICLES since 1970 and is also active on E&HEV committees of the SAE and ISO, as well as the Electric Power Research Organization.  Since 1965 he has been active in EV and HEV technology, having designed and built a high-performance EV, and having designed and built a high-performance, low-emissions, improved-fuel-consumption HEV.

He received his BA in Mathematics and Physics from Columbia College in New York City and his Ph.D. magna cum laude in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology.  A space travel buff since childhood, he is the Technical Societies Liaison for Curtis Industries, Inc., which provided the fuel gauges for the "dune buggies" that roamed the surface of the Moon during the APOLLO Program.  And he is one of the privileged persons still alive who knew Dr. Robert Goddard.


Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Jeff Greenwell


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