A range-extended luxury hybrid from Jaguar Land Rover may use a jet engine or we can say a tiny gas turbine to provide power for the vehicle’s electric motor. How important that could be? Just to give you an estimate Technology Strategy Board, a public agency that funds business development in the UK, has awarded Jaguar, along with British gas turbine manufacturer Bladon Jets and electric motor manufacturer SR Drives, with a whopping $24 million.
Other than Jaguar Volvo also took up an entirely new concept in 1993 named as Hybrid Environmental Concept. According to Bladon the goal behind this step is to be the World’s first commercially viable, and environment friendly gas turbine generator specifically designed to be applied in automobiles.
Earlier attempts by Chrysler Motor were quite popular of which the Chrysler Turbine Car might be the most famous. But the difference between the Chrysler and Jaguar concept is that in Chrysler technology was used to turn the driveshaft while in the JAG concept – like the Volvo one- a miniature gas turbine is used which produces power being used further by the electric motor.
Bladon says its axial flow turbines are small, lightweight and run on anything from natural gas to biofuel. That, it says, makes them a great alternative to the conventional engines used in range-extended hybrids like the Chevrolet Volt.
Following the long research of turbine cars in U.K, this announcement was made, where the experiments were carried out by Rover who built the first gas turbine powered car the Jet1 in 1950. The car though being a two seater was capable of sprinting to 88mph at a mind boggling 50,000rpm and and the engine was capable of running on any fuel which it used to burn like anything else. Fuel economy was 6 MPG and the exhaust was usually hotter than an oven. Rover continued experimenting with gas-turbine concepts through the 1950s and teamed up with British Racing Motors in the early 1960s to build a race car. The Rover-BRM generated 150 horsepower with a top speed of 140+ MPH and performed well at Le Mans from 1963 until 1965.
