AFS Trinity Power Corporation is an American corporation headquartered in Medina, WA with an engineering center in Livermore, CA that develops technology for plug-in hybrids. The company has developed PHEV technology that actively combines batteries with ultracapacitors. The company asserts that the combination of high-power ultracapacitors, which prefer to discharge and recharge quickly, and high-energy lithium-ion batteries, which prefer to discharge and recharge slowly, makes for a system with both long-life and high energy-density storage. EV World, AFS Trinity Perfects Plug-in Hybrid Saturn Vue, January 13, 2008

Prototype

AFS Trinity claims that this "Extreme Hybrid" technology makes it possible for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to achieve the equivalent of , travel per charge in all-electric mode and use gasoline for additional range (limited by gasoline tank size) in hybrid mode. The company also reports that its prototype "XH-150S" modified

Saturn Vue The Saturn Vue is a compact SUV that was built and marketed by Saturn, and it was Saturn's best-selling model. It was the first vehicle to use the GM Theta platform when it was introduced in 2001 for the 2002 model year. The Vue was facelifte ...

SUVs demonstrated 11.6 second 0-60 performance in electric-only mode and 6.9 second 0-60 performance in full hybrid mode, which would be comparable to a Porsche Cayenne.

History

AFS Trinity was formed on December 5, 2000, through the combination of two predecessor companies, American Flywheel Systems, Inc. (AFS), incorporated in 1991, and Trinity Flywheel Power (Trinity) which was incorporated in 1993. Since 1991, AFS Trinity has conducted programs with private and government organizations including

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. DOT, California Energy Commission, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Labs,

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

, Lockheed, and Ricardo plc. On January 24, 2006, AFS Trinity and Ricardo signed a Technology Partnership Agreement for Ricardo to help integrate AFS Trinity's Extreme Hybrid drive train technology into passenger cars and SUVs. On January 27, 2008, the company unveiled two modified

SUVs (called XH-150 SUV) at the

North American International Auto Show The Detroit Auto Show, formerly known as the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), is an annual auto show held in Detroit, Michigan. Hosted at Huntington Place (formerly Cobo Center) since 1965, it is among the largest auto shows in ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

. On January 26, 2010, AFS Trinity demonstrated its prototypes for Delaware officials including Governor Jack Markell, suggesting that Delaware's idled factories and workforce could potentially mass-produce the vehicle.

Technology

The powertrain using two forms of energy storage is disclosed in US patent application 11/519,350. The application describes a family of architectures where a battery is used in conjunction with a second energy storage device which may be an ultracapacitor, a

flywheel A flywheel is a mechanical device that uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy, a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In particular, a ...

, or a second battery. The purpose of the second energy storage device is to protect the battery from high current during high power operation.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Afs Trinity Plug-in hybrid vehicle industry