Internal combustion engines are notoriously inefficient. Most of the waste goes into creating heat. Now VW intends to use that waste heat to create electricity using thermocouples. These are not new - you may even have seen a fan using this technology sitting on someone's wood stove before. However they are rather inefficient themselves and so haven't been used much for larger applications. The VW claims are 600W from normal driving. The neat thing - this is from waste heat so it does not affect engine performance. On the other hand a traditional alternator steals energy from the motion of the engine - so it takes fuel to turn the alternator. The energy used to power the thermocouple, heat, is already being produced and just being released into the atmosphere (by the radiator). VW claims 5% improvement.
Story on GizMag. (Image from GizMag.)
Follow up: or you could generate electricity from the up/down motion of your vehicle as you go over bumps. Shocks that generate electricity.
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