What you guys think?

I looked at the comments, and I agree, it seems like nothing but a planetary gear.

I could do the same thing; if I direct drive an engine to a rear axle, and hook a motor up to one side the the axle, and call the other side of the axle my output shaft.

I don't see how it could be a transmission?

 

Does seem similar to a regular planetary setup -- they even talk about the 'sun gear'

Kudos to the guy for trying, but I don't think that he's there.

To me, it breaks down when they mention that they will vary the relative speed of the 2 shafts to change the output. Let's assume that works. OK, now how do you cause that to happen? Sounds like they used an electric motor to make that happen in the model.

hj

 

Yeah which is similar to a wheel spinning on one side of your car, and applying the brake on it to make the other side spin.

 

Clever but nothing revolutionary here, sure sounds to me like the exact same result can be accomplished with a "spider gear" setup like in a differential much simpler and of course cheaper. And as said by ford2go it's all going to depend on how you spin the two input shafts. I can however think of a perfect application for this where it might turn out to be a quite clever solution to a problem. That is Hybrid drive systems with one IC engine and one motor/generator. By connecting one power source to one of the two input shafts then varying the output of the two engines a smooth reverse to high speed transition could be accomplished in a rather practical way. Only thing that would need to be added would be a simple durable sprag clutch mechanism on the IC to prevent reverse rotation, and a stop clutch on the motor/generator to prevent free spinning.


For reverse the electric motor simply either over speeds in reverse rotation an off or idling IC engine, or if batteries are dead the IC engine over speeds a forced to stop dead motor/generator. Which depends on charge level. For forward acceleration and cruise and two engines simply each contribute as needed and able to provide both forward thrust and braking regeneration. I'd imagine a majority of the time 0 to about 45 would be largely handled by the electric side where the IC engine would join in for cruise power, hard acceleration or low battery power. Also at any point the IC engine can be over powered to provide for generation/charge.

 

I almost feel bad the guy spent money on patents and stuff.

I wonder, they did put the system in a truck, I wonder how the truck drives?
Would the system maybe act like a giant TQ converter?