CAN THIS TRANSMISSION REALLY DOUBLE YOUR CAR'S MILEAGE?

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Although the sensors and "brain'' which control these activities are complex, the actual hardware which does all the work is a very simple hydraulic system. If you'll look at the diagrams which accompany this article, you'll notice that the whole transmission consists of little more than a hydraulic pump (directly driven by a vehicle's engine), a pressure accumulator (which is where all the energy that would otherwise be wasted is stored), a reservoir (in which "extra" hydraulic fluid is kept until it's pumped into the accumulator), a hydraulic motor (which is what actually drives the vehicle's rear wheels when oil from the accumulator tank is pumped through it), and enough plumbing and valves to connect these major components together properly.

LET'S TRY 'ER OUT!

A typical "spin around the block" in an IST-equipped automobile isn't really any different from the same trip made in an ordinary car. No different, that is, up in the passenger compartment. Under the hood and along the vehicle's drive line, however, some most unusual-and gasoline savingactions will constantly be taking place.

If the IST-outfitted machine had been parked with an appreciable amount of pressure still in its accumulator, for instance ... you would get into the vehicle, turn on its key, step on the accelerator, and start moving down the road just as you would move in an ordinary automobile. Except for the fact that you'll be driving on "old" stored energy, and your car's engine won't even have started yet! (No wonder that acceleration is so smooth ... and so quiet!)

Nor will the internal combustion engine be started until the IST-equipped vehicle has traveled some distance down the road. How far? As much as it takes to bleed the stored hydraulic pressure in the IST accumulator tank down to a predetermined and pre-set minimum level. At that point the gasoline engine will be started automatically (you probably won't know-nor do you even need to know-when this happens). It will not, however, be started in the usual way (with electricity from a battery spinning an electric starter which, in turn, cranks over the internal combustion engine). Instead, some of the remaining pressure in the accumulator will be piped through the hydraulic pump that is directly attached to the engine, and-as the pump spins- it will act as the gasoline engine's starter.

Pretty clever, this invention of Vincent Carman's! But that's only the beginning of the fuel-stretching tricks that the Inertial Storage Transmission has up its sleeves. For example:

When you come to a red light and remove your foot from the accelerator ... you will not also have to step on the brake (which is left in an IST-outfitted car mostly as an emergency backup for the automatic braking action built right into the Inertial Storage Transmission itself). What happens, you see—as soon as you let up on the accelerator—is that the hydraulic motor which has been driving the rear wheels to make your vehicle move down the road ... that hydraulic motor is instantly converted into a pump. It no longer drives the wheels. Instead, the coasting wheels begin to drive it. And as this hydraulic unit is turned, it just like the pump attached directly to the car's internal combustion engine—begins to force more and more pressure into the IST accumulator.

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