Discussion Real or Fake? The Physics of Wind Vehicles

This is just an example of taking advantage of the environment, a flat (little to no gradient) ground, using wind power, using a motor vehicle to start, and being somewhat aerodynamic. Basically the same thing as a kite tied to a rock can stay in the air for days and the wind power farms make electricity to charge EVs that can most certainly go much faster than the wind.

 

The vehicle went against the wind, not with the wind? The car is pushed by the wind, so it's not driving against the wind until it's accelerating faster than the wind, which will create more drag.
The fan rotation is visually slower because it's much larger than the wheels. How did you figure out how the fan rpm and wheel rpm did not match?
The wheels are driving on a flat rock surface. I don't think there is anything to dig into, unless I'm mistaken about where they're driving.

Wait, you didn't watch the video before you commented? Why would you argue about something first before checking if what's shown is correct or not?

 

- Kite only provides surface that produce lift vis a vis to wind directed against it. The reason why it has to be helped by pulling it before it can be raised higher is because the wind speed is slower in the ground. You can tie it into the rock and it'll keep afloat as long as there's strong enough wind force to produce lift enough to keep it afloat. If there's no wind force producing lift enough for it's weight it'll fall eventually. Which is why the heavier they are the harder it can stay afloat.
- wind farm produce electricity and accumulated it in their batteries. They also only produced electricity proportional to it's volumes and rpm. Which is why they have to be both big and placed where the wind current is stronger.
If what you say is possible why don't we have windmill powered EV already ?

Because the physics doesn't add up already.

Yes even after counting the different volume of the windmill it still don't match. You can go ahead try count it yourself whether they match.

Try making model of it in physics simulation yourself if you want to proof it. Note that it uses the physics of weight, kinetic conversion, friction and aerodynamic.

 

I don't have the money to make my own wind propelled vehicle, and I have no idea how to make a physics simulation of a wind propelled vehicle.

I found a video explaining how this might work using high school physics. Is this video also fake?

 

Does he count the mass, the friction, the conversion lost against the directional wind forces ? If you only put in paper using physics formula i can say for sure it isn't possible for the vehicle to be faster than the winds.

 

The person in the video is actually simulating how the car works, but with gears instead of a car.

To summarize, the car sees the air flow past it, but the grounds seems to move faster past the car than the air, even though it's the air that's moving the car. The propeller is similar to how a boat with a sail that is slanted to the wind is faster than the wind.

 

Unless they have far more surfaces to convert the wind forces and act like a sail it is unlikely they'd even be almost as fast.

All three point i gives you deduced the energy it gain from the winds.

I'll give you one more physics to consider. The windmill must gain resistant from the wind force to rotate. If they went as fast they gain no rotation. If they went faster they became drag. What force it uses to move the weight of the vehicle plus a human inside ? Unless they had motor they wouldn't move or slowing down.

 

The propeller is not acting like a windmill, converting wind to speed. The propeller acts similar to a sail, converting lift from different wind pressure into speed. If sails worked the same as a windmill, then there wouldn't exist ships faster than the wind before the invention of motors and engines.

The propeller works because the wheels make the propeller spin, creating a forward "lift" that speeds up the boat. The car uses the force of the wind to move the car. There exists a speed differentiation between the air and the ground, even though the ground is technically not moving in reference to the car.

It doesn't seem like we'll ever convince each other at this rate, so I say we stop. I'll leaning towards believing the video, but until I see a land yacht in person, I'll be a little skeptical about it.

Edit: Last note, imagine a yoyo on the end of a ribbon or string. If you pull the string towards your hand, the yoyo comes towards the hand faster than your hand is pulling the string. This concept applies as well to a land yacht, aka the car. I'm probably messed up the analogy somehow, but this is as close as I can explain how the land yacht works.

 

It's called inertia. For the yoyo to return back opposing gravity it need greater speed than what it gets from free fall. If you just drop it from your hand it will not reroll it's strings back into your hand. You need to flick it to give them faster inertial rotations.

 

Land yacht world record stands at 202.9 Kph with wind speeds fluctuating between 48 to 80 Kph
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_sailing

 

Check the recent video by Derrick.

 

Like I said, it is a non-sustainable result of taking advantage of the environment with a lightweight vehicle, just like a kite. Flywheels are the most efficient to preserve energy, there is no free energy, infrastructure needs to be built and energy has to change forms. A large turbine moves to make AC current so the little fan and compressor in your air-conditioner can get to work. It is not 'over unity' to go slightly faster than the wind and using that speed and air pressure to generate push to keep going faster than the wind, this is a very poor example of a glider and will not go on forever, it is still being effected by the friction of the air, ground, and water. If you want perpetual motion you need to get out of the gravity well and launch it into the darkest void, it will go on in one direction for longer than our star will burn.