KERS

 

KERS is a very new technology that is starting to be in use in race cars and now, some street cars. The video explains how it works pretty much. It stores energy that is expelled through the natural process of driving, in this braking and then when there is enough power stored, that can be expelled to give the car a burst of speed. In Formula 1, they save the power so that it can be used to give the car power so that it can speed up at a higher rate above the cars potential. This does not translate very well to the consumer car market except for a very few cars at the top where that extra little power makes their car faster than their competitors for fast street going cars. Instead, this KERS technology, or Kinetic Energy Recovery System, will be used as a sort of hybrid instead. The car will store natural energy expelled from the car and then it will be used to power the engine instead of fuel at times. It is truly a revolutionary way to go forward with a hybrid because there is no need for a special fuel or anything like that and the cars would be able to be similar to the way that they are today.

It is a strong example which demonstrates the transition from race cars to the street. A lot of technology that is in modern cars was first put into practice to make cars go faster on racetracks. Things like transmissions and traction control were taken from race cars. Racing teams are always looking for advantages and this spurs a lot of new, innovative technologies. Formula 1 teams have budgets in the hundreds of millions. This affords them a lot of money for research and development because they only have produce two cars to go out on the racetrack. This fosters research and the technology gets tested on the tracks by the cars and the companies and then it is a lot easier for it to transition to street cars as the technology has already been tested.