Presidential hopeful Obama released his list of 'earmarks', in an attempt to show transparency to the voters. In 2006, Obama reqested $2 million for HUMVEE hybrid conversion project, and was able to secure $1 million in funds. (See previous post on Hybrid HUMVEE.)
In case you aren't aware, earmarks are funds set aside for specific projects or a particular organization. Congressmen and women typically earmark funds for projects within their own state.
The funds were set aside for the Illinois Institute of Technology. They wanted to retrofit HUMVEES with electric hybrid systems in order to produce gains in acceleration and fuel efficiency. Prototypes indicated a 50% gain.
A quick search found the following abstract of the paper published in Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on. One of the authors, Amadi (follow link for list of publications), seems to be well up on the subject of hybrid technology.
Modeling and Simulation of Various Hybrid-Electric Configurations of the High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV)
Although hybrid-electric vehicles have been studied mainly with the aim of increasing fuel economy, little has been done in order to improve both fuel economy and performance. However, vehicular-dynamic-performance characteristics such as acceleration and climbing ability are of prime importance in military vehicles such as the high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV). This paper concentrates on the models that describe hybridized HMMWV vehicles and the simulation results of those models. Parallel and series configurations have been modeled using the advanced-vehicle-simulator software developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Both a retrofit approach and a constant-power approach have been tested, and the results are compared to the conventional model results. In addition, the effects of using smaller engines than the existing ones in hybrid HMMWV drive trains have been studied, and the results are compared to the data collected from an actual implementation of such a vehicle. Moreover, the integrated-starter/alternator (ISA) configuration has been considered, and the results were encouraging
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