On Dec 4, 2009, at 3:00 PM, cdb wrote:

> The car uses lithium polymer batteries combined with a diesel fuelled
> microturbine. The car can travel 80 miles on battery alone, and then
> the turbine fires up and recharges the batteries on the fly

I recall hearing that this is essentially how/why a diesel-electric  
locomotive works.  Apparently you can make a diesel motor run VERY  
efficiently if it has a fixed target RPM and/or load, while electric  
motors do the "variable speed" thing without losing nearly as much  
efficiency as an IC engine would.

Are these latest electric cars with IC-based charging (also includes  
the Chevy Volt, I believe) just the result of this sort of technology  
(finally) scaling down to personal vehicle size?

BillW

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