Never mind present-day’s bonny blather on the benefits of electric, hydrogen and biofuel power.
How do you feel about magnets?
Better make up your mind, stat; as of this morning, a company named Motoflux Inc. has apparently figured out how to use magnetic fields for motor-driven energy, dropping a ground-breaking, first-ever proof-of-concept prototype.
This new shift in the zero-emission industry – if true – proves not only that permanent magnet power is possible, but that electric, hydrogen and biofuel energy now have a very competent contender.
The inventor’s so sure of this tech, he’s even opened the tech up for licensing.
I love my job.
Harnessing the power of magnets has been seen as a redundant bit of tech; with “no substantial energy in magnets that could be employed for propulsion or to compensate for energy losses,” even Wikipedia posits that magnet-driven energy alone is not realizable (via Wikipedia).
So what makes this motor different from previous designs?
Unlike the ongoing drive to realize magnet power sans external energy source, Corbin’s unit uses electricity – though far less than your standard EV.
Using a three-way design that requires a center – the radial director – as well as two permanent magnets and a wheel he’s dubbed the ‘stator,’ energy is created by forcing magnets to realign with their ideal pole angles.
This happens because the motor’s center – a bar appearing very much like an axle – is connected to the wheel by way of the permanent magnets on either side; in creating the wheel’s singular sandwich of magnets and center, a clean magnetic field passes through the wheel itself, mimicking the flow of poles on our own earth.
Turning the center’s radial director moves the magnets out of alignment, creating torque as they move back into place.
The ‘magnet’-tude of his invention is not lost on Corbin; with the new motor using a fraction of the energy typically demanded by electric engines, Corbin believes the opportunities of his “Motoflux principle” are endless.
“The idea of Motoflux is that we want to extract power from the force stored in permanent magnets,” explains Mike Corbin in a recent press release.
“The Motoflux principle gives us a way to get a magnetic field to rotate and give us torque. Think of the potential of removing most of the battery mass of all those electric cars and minimizing the carbon footprint (of battery production).”
Despite Corbin publishing proof of concept on his website (via the Youtube link here), there’s still some work to be done when it comes to implementation for the Powersports industry, and we need a John/Jane Doe to start tinkering.
What do you think of permanent magnet motors? Do you believe they have a place in today’s bikes?