> 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...
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.
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.
Having a rotary with a turbo should be able to work better at a lower scale for a pretty cheap production cost.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car
The ideas and innovations back then seemed amazing
Comes with daily free health checkup (in form of an X-Ray).
Maybe neutrino imaging?