Alternative Automotive Engines

Delta Force

Banned
Maybe you want a car that can double as a generator? Or a car that can run on kerosene? Or, you know, just because, which is about the only reason I can find for the Ford Nucleon.

I don't think Ford was serious about the Nucleon. I think a nuclear reactor could fit in something the size of a car (or at least a fissile core capable of achieving critical mass could), but once you take into account the reactor vessel, coolant loops (even if you combine secondary and primary loops) and radiation shielding you would have a low performance car. Even an atomic battery wouldn't be practical for a car as ones used on space probes (which don't have to worry about shielding and safety devices for a manned or terrestrial object) give a terrible 4 horsepower to metric ton power to weight ratio.

Maybe you should go back and ask the bosses at GM why they threw so much at the gas turbines then, because if those can get that kind of funding, I fail to see why one company or another wouldn't be willing to throw some at hybrids.

A turbine-electric hybrid actually isn't that impractical. The General Motors EV1 actually was a turbine-electric hybrid. The major issue I see for a 1960s turbine car is that the first large turbine powered ship was the Canadian Iroquois class destroyer, and even the Iroquois used a geared turbine powertrain. Modern hybrids only started due to the environmental movement. The first modern hybrid was developed in 1972 as part of a United States government environmental initiative. American Motor Company made the AMC Amitron electric car in the late 1960s, and its performance figures look good (50 miles per hour with a 150 mile range), but apparently it was heavily dependent on government environmental program funding and suffered from expensive batteries. Interestingly, the Amitron helped develop an early form of the regenerative braking systems used in modern hybrid cars.
 
Modern hybrids only started due to the environmental movement.
A gas-turbine hybrid does have the advantage of being able to run on just about any liquid fuel, which was, I think, the reason Rover first took interest in the idea. Now let's assume that in the late 50s, in a fit of, well, not brilliance (that would have been stopping the whole project and investing in improvements in their current range), but intelligence, that one of the team pointed out that the throttle issues of the JET-1 could be solved by attaching the engine to generator, and a motor to the gearbox.

The EV1 was a turbine electric car? I'm pretty sure it was a battery electric.
There were several different models tested as I understand it, one of which was turbine powered.
 
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If no single technology worked well at the time, why not have the hybrid caloric turbine-nickel-zinc-battery-electric plug-in hybrid I proposed? It would be pretty easy to produce for any Industrialized country to produce, just like Yugoslavia, which was not burdened by American corporate dominance nor Soviet technological stagnation and dogma.
 
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