Nobel committee? Yes... that one right there... they've just solved the world's energy problems forever, please give them all the medals!

You've just revolutionized green energy! I expect your Nobel Prize is in the mail!

Better start working on a speech!

You invented recuperation braking. Nice.

i've seen people do that with vw beetles. it's cute.

Hand-crank starters were in production until the 90s apparently. The lada niva (a small weird truck thing) had them through 1998. Who knew?

I know it’s not quite the same but.. wind up key part is! I was gunna find a pic but there don't seem to be any showing the crank in use, only videos.

or dont do that for planned obsolescence

For this to work, you've gotta bring more weight down than you do back up.

Thankfully, you can just leave all your hopes and dreams at the workplace to make your car lighter on the way back!

So you reverse the car to work and then coast your way home on spring power? I guess you'd have to go the long way into work.

sounds like a great what if post

I feel like I had one installed over my garage door.

I heard about a version that used springs as well. Basically a pull-back car: When you break, it puts tension on the springs, then it releases that tension when accelerating. Apparently it was very good for city-driving, since you get an absurd number of cycles with very small "charges", which makes it very good when you do a lot of start/stop driving in slow traffic. I'm not sure why I haven't heard any more about it in more recent years.

i think it was a bus, and it was used in hills to get extra energy while going down and using ot while going up.

Well, I think it's clear that this would work. The only question is what distances it could reach? 100m? a kilometer? more?