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Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

This might not qualify because it was never really in the zeitgeist, but I remember around 2000 that flywheels were going to be an amazing mobile energy storage mechanism. Your car would rev up a massive disk inside a vacuum, and use its momentum to propel itself in stop and go traffic.

I believe the showstopper was that in even the slightest fender-bender, the flywheel would get off-balance and yeet off in a random direction, causing mayhem and calamity.

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Isn’t that exactly what this company is selling? https://www.torus.co/

It sounds unbelievable.

> Energy Retention After 10 Years 100%

> Potential Storage Capacity 1 day 32 kWh, 10 years 116,800 kWh, 25 years 292,000 kWh

What's the down side? Is it expensive? Is it slow to release energy on demand?

Everyone still slightly worried about what happens if it cracks, and I think the cost of lithium batteries has simply won?

Neat! Hadn't heard of them. I think the company I remember was called Ballard, and their flywheels were intended to drive the vehicle mechanically rather than to generate electricity.

In ME school I was on our human powered vehicle team and we actually designed our bike with a flywheel. I remember using it like one or two times during a race at UF just to give my legs a break. It was a piece of junk bike, but the flywheel was cool.

Formula 1 KERS can be either flywheel or batteries.

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