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The machine I always wanted to see tested was an automobile using flywheel storage.

I keep wondering just how you'd mount the rotating mass. Fully gimballed, coupling power to the wheels would be tricky, unless it was all-electric. For rigidly mounted flywheels, I would expect the vehicle would occasionally rise up onto two, or even one, of its wheels. This could produce a lot of amusing videos.

The way to mount big grid-power flywheels is with the axis parallel to Earth's. And I'd insist they be down in pits, because the thought of one coming loose and hopping around the countryside is the stuff of disaster movies.

Tom Ligon wrote:The machine I always wanted to see tested was an automobile using flywheel storage.

I keep wondering just how you'd mount the rotating mass. Fully gimballed, coupling power to the wheels would be tricky, unless it was all-electric. For rigidly mounted flywheels, I would expect the vehicle would occasionally rise up onto two, or even one, of its wheels. This could produce a lot of amusing videos.

I think you would use two flywheels (spinning in opposite direction) to counteract each other. The biggest problem I see, is when those flywheels get loose in an accident. All that power released would probably make for quite a "mess".

If you want a high capacity “flywheel”, look up info on the “launch loop” Properly suspended you can get ~8km/sec of velocity for your kinetics equation.