Chrysler once envisioned a future filled with turbine-powered automobiles capable of screaming down America’s highways at staggering speeds. They even built a few hundred road-ready prototypes. But neither Chrysler nor any other car company ever made turbine cruisers. Capstone MicroTurbine, however, wants to put the whirling engines back on the road in a big way.

The industrial turbine manufacturer has built a plugin turbine-electric supercar, called the CMT-380. The car is driven by powerful electric motors that get their juice from lithium-polymer batteries and a microturbine that spins a generator. The 30kW microturbine/generator is is usually used for power in industrial and military applications. In the CMT-380, it burns diesel or biodiesel and gives the car a 500-mile range. Plus, it’s ultra-low-emissions rated and burns cleaner than many modern gas-engined cars.

The car is no slouch either. Capstone say it’s capable of reaching 60mph in 3.9 seconds and can hit 150mph. It’s also pretty good looking. The CMT-380 is built on a slick Factory Five Racing GTM kit, which resembles a Ford GT40 crossed with a Jaguar XJ220.

The CTM-380 is meant to show what the Capstone microturbine can do in an automobile and may see limited production if it generates enough interest. It’s an interesting concept—turbines are a great choice for power generation in a hybrid because they’re efficient when they spin at a constant speed. They can also run on almost any liquid fuel that has a high enough octane.

Link to Gizmag article

A car’s shocks dissipate a lot of energy when they soak up bumps. Engineers at Tufts University have figured out how to turn that energy into electricity that could be used to power the car. 

The team has built electro-magnetic shocks that are essentially linear generators, using the up-and-down motion of the shock’s travel to generate electricity. The engineers envision using their shocks on hybrid vehicles. They estimate that a 2,500 pound car traveling at 45 mph would recover between 20 and 70 percent of the electricity it uses from the shocks.

The shocks could greatly extend the range of plug-in hybrid vehicles, but they may be put to better use on trucks. Massive rigs have a far greater potential for generating energy—when they hit a bump, tons of force compresses the shock. Good tech, for sure.

Link to Autoblog article
Link to iCars article