MOTOR NOTES.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 126, 1 April 1926, Page 7

MOTOR NOTES.

NEW MOTOR POWER. THE “PERMANENT ELECTRET.” Car’s Propulsive Evolution. Petrol, Steam, Electricity. Coincident with the holding of a series @f annual automobile shows in various parts of the American continent has come the news to New York that a discovery has just been made by a Japanese scientist that may be the final stage in the perfection of the popular motor car. That final stage, many engineers agree, will be electric, yet without the bother, little power and short life afforded by the storage battery type of electric automobiles of to-day. As explained in New York, the discovery is a way of producing permanent electricity, in what Professor Mototara Eguchi, of the Higher Naval College at Tokio, calls a “ permanent electret.” The permanent electret is to electricity what the permanent magnet is to mechanics. Its possibilities have not even been thought of, because it is still in its experimental stage. But it has the same prospects, if not greater, in the field of practical electrics as the permanent magnet had in the field of practical mechanics when it was invented back in 1600. The automobile is one of the “ electret’s ” future fields. Underneath hoods of the future may be devices, based on Eguchi’s electret, replacing with much higher efficiency the gasoline and steam power plants of to-day. The electret, as crudely shaped as it is to-day, has been shown to keep its electric charge up to 20,000 volts to a centimetre of surface, since 1919, when it was first made, without a loss. Thus, somewhat like the permanent magnet, the permanent electret may be the motive power of automobiles—among the many other possibilities it has—in the future. Until that stage arrives, there may be a transition—perhaps from the gasoline to the steam car. Motor engineers grant that to sound surprising, since the steam car once enjoyed greater popularity than it has to-day, and since there seems to be little discussion over the rmanence of the gasoline car. MODERN INEFF JIENT ENGINE. But it is well known in the United States that engineers are not satisfied with gasoline as a source of motive powers in autos. It is highly inefficient in the variable speed motors essentials to motor cars and requires many parts in the transmission of its power that affect its efficiency. It is noted that the carburettor that requires adjustment cams and cam shafts that need timing, gears for the various stages of transmission, with clutch and lever to control their mechanism. Attempts are being made to simplify the transmission, but nothing of this sort is in sight yet. This is the great argument of advocates of the steam car, who even go so far as to say that the public will return to this source of power as a relief from the old. What is keeping them back is the availability of petrol as a source of direct power, coupled with the popular belief that power direct from fuel is better than power indirectly through steam. American engineers argue that the steam car has the advantage of flexibility, of simplicity and ease of control. It is as safe as any such apparatus could be and its only shortcoming is that it has been unable to live down the poor impression it made when it was first introduced, when it took time to start, effort to control and care to keep it from blowing up. Now these fears and prejudices are taken care of, arid, with more education, coupled with the decline of gasoline production, the steam car is expected to come back. But it is now believed that this will only be for the interval to the time when the permanent electret, or some similar electiic device, will take its place.