Seems like it was an innovative idea that was poised to put the company on the leading edge of new tech.

Last try of turbine cars LeBaron Turbine 1977 - YouTube

__________________
"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time"

Showing your age? LOL

I remember them too. You could hear the whine of the turbine even if you couldn't see it directly. They were around cities for a while then went away.

There's a jet turbine motorcycle here, it shows up at local "cars & coffee" and the whine is somewhat, how shall we say, annoying?

Jet Engine Motorcycle - YouTube

Turbines are simply not the most efficient engines for automobiles in most cases. Cars require power on demand and the throttle lag of turbine engines is a pretty big detractor. There were turbine formula one cars, and they were unsuccessful for this reason. My idea has been a series of mini gas-turbine generators powering electric motors (and possibly a clutch driven mechanical drive) but of course that has its own challenges.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

We have a trolley (bus) here in town powered like that. Nifty, but not sure just how advantageous.

MV

Believe it or not, the first I heard of it was today!

__________________
"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time"

Gas turbine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rover-BRM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Well I guess I'm showing my age...LOL

Somebody in my town had a demo then. It was at the local shopping center and on the road for a couple years.

Thermally - combustion turbines will run more efficiently than most reciprocating engines (IIRC large 2-stroke diesels..think Sulzer...would be the exception). You'd think that power/weight and power/consumption they win over 4cycle gasoline every time.

Turbines do like to run at 20k+ rpm - thats a challenge to make a gearbox that spins that fast for 100k miles (how many hours?)

But I also think that they need to run at one speed to gain any significant efficiency advantage.

The other factor would be part-throttle economy. One of the reasons these guys with 6.0l diesels get better mileage in the Cumminstrokemax's on the highway is becuase the diesel cycle is better suited for partial-load economy. I'm not sure how well a turbine scores in this category.

As I recall, I 'stole' some numbers from an ABB 80MW generating turbine - (running on natural gas) - fuel consumption vs. load, and for a machine that is made to run at 3600 RPM, the curve was pretty straight (ie: 100% load consumed twice the fuel that 50% load did etc...). This is a very large machine though, with a LOT of controls, inlet misting etc....might not be a good comparason.

BCarlton would be all over this...

I think that we could start in the large truck category - hybrid powerplant with a turbine generator. They'd run diesel fuel (or Kerosene IIRC) so it'd be easy to integrate into the fleet - any fuel savings at all *could* make the investment worthwhile.

granted, I threw a lot of variables out there (turbine life, hybrid-electric driveline costs, waste heat handling, emissions...)

Some helicopters have smaller turbines that would fit in a truck...

-John

__________________
2009 Kia Sedona
2009 Honda Odyssey EX-L
12006 Jetta Pumpe Duse
(insert Mercedes here)

Husband, Father, sometimes friend =)

While I don't have time to go into it right now, do some reading on the M1 Abrams powerplant. It's a turbine, with a hydro-mechanical transmission, rated 1500 H.P. There are some concerns about fuel usage, but a lot of this has to do with operation characteristics. While a tank is designed to roar into battle at speed across varied terrain, most of the time (when not at war), they are idling along, low speed road marches and so forth. The turbine really shines at the former, but not at the latter. Something like an over the road truck could be well spec'd out to perform with the right size turbine, as their running patterns are fairly steady and/or predictable.

MV

IIRC, Mack tried that years ago, and Union Pacific experimented with turbine-powered locomotives. Their fuel consumption was almost the same whether at idle or full power. I think the kiss of death for UP was when an overpass was melted by a locomotive left idling underneath. They were powerful, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 HP IIRC.

__________________
'83 300D, 126K miles.

That's interesting - how long ago was the turbine powered locomotive? Was the fuel consumption less than the typical diesel/electric locomotives?

__________________
"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time"

GM Heritage Center Collection | 1953 Firebird I

General Motors Motorama Firebird I, II, III (1953-1959)

Chrysler Turbine Car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


War Is Boring » Army Overland Train: Hybrids in the 1950s!


.

Age is but a number...

...as is a prison sentence.

__________________
"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time"

That Mako Shark I Corvette is awesome!

__________________
"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time"