On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 6:32 PM, William "Chops" Westfield wrote: > > 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 > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > Yeah, that is indeed how diesel electric trains work. And turbines would be ideally suited for consant RPM running. The reason they were epic fail in the 50 -60's or whenever they were playing with them is that they suck for spooling up and down like would be required for typical driving. I was happy when I first heard the concept of the Volt, since thats what I always thought to myself they should do. Though using a gasoline engine in the Volt could have been improved on, IMO. At least, use a turbocharged gas engine to up efficiency (since the user cant get on the throttle hard and run the engine hard, the turbo could help mileage in this case, or even better a turbo diesel, or maybe even a 2 stroke diesel like the trains use. -- Jonathan Hallameyer -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist