So you have compact size, good power to weight ratio, and power limitations that don't really matter for range extender purposes. Lots of potential.
I can't find the article right now, but I'd swear I remember discussion here a handful of months ago about a startup marketing a similar EV range extender engine design.
He said that they had to put really big brakes on it. I guess for some reason you can't just have a clutch. Personally if I was going for eco I'd want something more clever than "bigger brakes" but maybe building something like a Hybrid Synergy Drive is harder than building a turbine.
There's no compression braking (engine braking) with a turbine engine.
The EcoJet is just one of many examples of his cars that have been improved in this way.
You can tell Jay genuinely loves cars and the history of the auto world. He's indulging his hobby interest in a way that will preserve these vehicles for future generations to see and learn about. As far as ways rich people can spend their money that's a pretty cool one in my book.
https://bandimere.com/previewing-the-brakes-plus-jet-car-nat...
If you want to use a gas turbine for producing power, you will set it up such that most of the energy goes into the work generated, rather than the exhaust, so it would be a cooler, slower exhaust, similar to an IC-engine.
(A ducted fan is still a propeller.)
> They produce very little power, just enough to power the Auxiliary Power Unit (that manages the plane electronics, air-conditioning etc.).
The APU is a completely separate gas turbine that doesn’t rely on the main engines. As a consequence, the APU on an airplane will also have its own exhaust.
> If you want to use a gas turbine for producing power, you will set it up such that most of the energy goes into the work generated, rather than the exhaust, so it would be a cooler, slower exhaust, similar to an IC-engine.
Yes, obviously. At the same time, I was under the impression that turboprops and turboshafts on airplanes and helicopters still produced enough jet exhaust to represent a safety hazard, and in those applications you would also expect that most of the energy would go into the work generated rather than the exhaust. So is it just that this residential generator is even more efficient than the main engine of a heavy-lift helicopter? Is it because it’s a less powerful machine in the first place? I could continue to speculate about this but I don’t actually know.
So instead you extract most of the energy, and then use the last little bit as extra thrust in a plane/helicopter.
Comes with daily free health checkup (in form of an X-Ray).
Maybe neutrino imaging?
> Gas turbines scale extremely poorly. They rely on small clearance between the rotating blades and the housings for efficiency. The smaller the turbine, the greater the relative clearance and the more energy is lost. Gas turbines, at least with established technology, make very little sense below 300ish HP. As a real life comparison: A Robinson R44 piston helicopter and an R66 turbine Helicopter have almost identical design, dimensions, and weights. Power is around 250 / 300hp. The former burns between 50-60L of gas per hour at cruise, the latter around 90-110L of Jet fuel.
1 - https://old.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/s8vkv8/are_wankel_eng...
I believe a Tesla can charge its battery pack at approximately this rate.
There's no reason to have a generator that charges the pack in a hurry. It really only needs to cover the maximum sustained average draw - driving up an extended grade at high speed. That's a lot less than 300 hp - it's probably not more than 80 hp or so at most.
The UK's drone engines come in light and small with models that range from 5 BHP to 120 BHP with 40 BHP being suitable for broad swathe of "typical" driving.
And with metal 3d printers rapidly falling in price, I think it will get within the scope of university students to prototype soonish.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-little...
This one, for example, weighs 450 grams, but can consume its own mass in fuel every three minutes!
https://www.kingtechturbinesaustralia.com.au/product-page/k4...
Having a rotary with a turbo should be able to work better at a lower scale for a pretty cheap production cost.
When scaling down, gas turbines become much more expensive than ICE. For example on small planes market, exist many dual-powered models (in range 200-300hp), and with gas turbine it typically priced twice of ICU-powered with very similar parameters. Range of 1000hp+ on planes are near totally gas turbines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
The ideas and innovations back then seemed amazing
Possibly https://liquidpiston.com
Prior discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Also for those who don't know, it's pronounced /ˈvaŋkl̩/ or /ˈvaŋkəl̩/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In German, "W" is pronounced as "V" in English, and the "e" in the syllable "kel" is reduced to a schwa ([ə]) sound, common in many German pronunciations of unstressed vowels.
They can simulate lots of it but to get real answers, they have to build the engine and see how it holds up.
Also Mazda is a small-ish manufacturer at the Japanese scale. Since Wankels are part of their identity they could decide to build a car with it even though the downsides wouldn't make sense for a "rational" brand like Toyota. It can give them that creative freedom that help make desirable cars and keep Mazda relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdjj52FUsEo
>These are some of the earliest ads I wrote and directed. Many of these ads cost our client just a couple of hundred dollars. When you look at this early attempt ant animation, it's not surprising that it didn't cost much more as a decent lunch these day!
>It's hard to believe now how absolutely 'revolutionary' the rotary engine appeared to be in those days. Many of us expected that they would eventually take over from reciprocating engines completely.
>This ad was produced just before the moon landing.
>The Agency was Hayes Advertising, Sydney. My producer (and dear friend) was Max Cleary and the Account Director was Vic Violet.
Mazda RX-3 Commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHzeGEHWMjo
>Piston engine goes boing, boing, boing, boing.
>Mazda engine goes Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Felix Wankel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Wankel
>Wankel and the Nazi Party
>During the early 1920s Wankel was a member of various radical anti-Semitic organizations. In 1921 he joined the Heidelberg branch of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and in 1922 he became a member of the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers Party (or "Nazi Party"), which was banned soon afterwards. Wankel founded and led youth groups associated with a cover-up organization of the NSDAP. With them he conducted paramilitary training, scouting games and night walks.[3] When his high esteem for technical innovations was not widely shared among the German Youth Movement, he was offered instead the opportunity to talk about the issue of technology and education to Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists in 1928.[4]
>In the meantime Wankel's mother, Gerty had helped founding the local chapter of the NSDAP in his hometown of Lahr. Here Wankel not only rejoined the party in 1926, but also met the local Gauleiter, i.e. regional head of the NSDAP party, Robert Heinrich Wagner. In 1931 Wagner entrusted Wankel with the leadership of the Hitler Youth in Baden. But they soon fell out with each other, because Wankel tried to put a stronger emphasis on military training, whereas Wagner wished for the Hitler Youth to be a primarily political organization. In a particularly bitter and ugly controversy Wankel publicly accused Wagner of corruption. Wagner retaliated by stripping Wankel of his office by early 1932 and managed to have him expelled from the party in October 1932.
>Wankel, who sympathized with the social-revolutionary wing of the NSDAP with Gregor Strasser, then founded his own National Socialist splinter group in Lahr and continued his attacks on Wagner. Since the Nazis' seizure of power on 30 January 1933 had strengthened his position, Wagner had Wankel arrested and imprisoned in the Lahr jail in March 1933. Only by intervention of Hitler's economic adviser Wilhelm Keppler and Hitler himself, was Wankel set free in September 1933.[5] A fellow native of Baden and member of Reichstag from 1933 to 1945, Keppler had been a friend of Wankel and an ardent supporter of his technological endeavors since 1927. He now helped Wankel to get state contracts and his own Wankels Versuchs Werkstätten experimental workshop in Lindau.
>Wankel tried to rejoin the NSDAP in 1937, but was turned down.[6] With the help of Keppler, however, he was admitted to the SS in 1940 in the rank of Obersturmbannführer.[7] Two years later his membership was revoked for unknown reasons.[6]