This is now wandering completely off topic...

Your suggestion is already begun to be used in Cruise ships (those big
monster boats). Instead of huge engines driving a propeller in the
water, they put smaller electric motors on pods outside the hull each
driving a propeller. The pods are on swivel mounts, doing away with the
need for rudder. All they then need is the generator (which they need
anyways to provide electricity for all the guests.

The cruise ship turns out to be much more manuverable than when it was
the built the old way and more reliable too.

The military is using the same approach in the hybrid humvee. It can
run in hybrid mode or full electric (silent) mode.

However, there is still a fair amount of sophistication in the design.
You still need pretty strong (torquey) motors on each wheel, and if you
want to recover energy when braking, you need sophisticated
electronics. The benefits are you get to do away with the transmission,
but you add weight with batteries.

On Monday, April 28, 2003, at 09:16 PM, Joel Walker wrote:
>
> see, to me, the better choice would be a hybrid .... but not the
> way they are doing it. back to the original porsche car ... first
> car he ever designed:  gasoline (or diesel) generator to power
> four electric motors, one at each wheel. all-time 4wd.
>