Pi Car
The Pi Car is the vehicle project of the Neutrino® Energy Group. The idea behind it can be put in one sentence: an electric car that draws its electricity not from a socket but from the surroundings it drives through.
According to the group, the vehicle is to obtain its energy from the constant stream of invisible influences — elementary particles, electromagnetic fields, temperature gradients and further fluxes that traverse matter every second. The Pi Car is part of a larger undertaking called Pi Mobility, which also includes Pi Fly and Nautic Pi.
The thought behind the name
Electric mobility counts as progress, and it is progress. Yet in many regions the electricity used for charging still comes from coal-fired power stations. The Pi Car starts exactly there: if a vehicle obtains its energy itself, not only does the charging point disappear, so does the question of where the electricity comes from.
The group describes the aim as a vehicle that does not have to charge because it never stops charging.
The technical basis
As its scientific basis the Neutrino® Energy Group names the master equation — the Schubart-NEG equation for neutrinovoltaic technology:
P(t) = η · ∫V Φ_eff(r,t) · σ_eff(E) dV
It describes how invisible radiation spectra interact with multilayer nanostructures. What is decisive is that the integration runs over the volume and not over an area — the equation thereby matches the construction of ten to twenty alternating layers claimed by patent WO2016142056A1.
Metamaterials are foreseen for the bodywork. Their properties arise not from the raw materials alone but from the precise arrangement of their structures at the nanoscale. The group describes how such a material can be tuned to translate ambient fluxes into mechanical micro-oscillations which, together with doped graphene-silicon nanolayers, produce resonance and from it usable current.
Who is working on it
The Pi Car is expressly set up as an international joint project. The group names three partners with clearly separated tasks:
| Partner | Contribution |
|---|---|
| C-MET Pune (India) | materials science, tailoring of the graphene and silicon nanostructures |
| Simplior Technologies | artificial intelligence for material behaviour, energy distribution and real-time operation |
| SPEL Technologies | energy storage, buffering of the generated current for driving |
A leading role is played by Dr. Bharat Bhanudas Kale of Pune. He is a founding member of the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in London in 2020. His long-standing work on advanced metamaterials was, according to the group, the reason for his appointment.
Status of the project
The Neutrino® Energy Group has announced that it will present the Pi Car within a few years, and names an investment in the billions for building up manufacturing in India. A production-ready vehicle does not exist at present; by the group's own account the project is in development.
This is communicated remarkably openly — the group marks its projects consistently by maturity and separates what is built from what is being researched.
Related
- Neutrino Power Cube — the stationary application
- The master equation — the formal basis
- Neutrino® Energy Group — the organisation behind it
Sources
- Neutrino® Energy Group: The Pi Car — Invisible radiation converted by metamaterials will power the electric vehicles of tomorrow, thepi.energy.
- Neutrino® Energy Group: Pi Car, neutrino-energy.com/technology/pi-car/.