Jaguar celebrates 75th year with e-supercar concept

E-Type rump aside, it looks like a Lotus

and the powerplant is pure fiction. There's a definitely a market for high-end hybrid supercars: witness Porsche's 918 concept car that stirred up enough interest to take it into limited production, but without realistic production-ready tech the whole exercise is no different to the 50's nuclear-powered concept cars that never saw production either...

Jaguar?

Paint it red and it's a Ferrari.

When the battery runs out ...

... it's going to slow down a bit!

Two 94KW generators are going to struggle with providing power to four 195KW motors, and recharging the battery at the same time.

Still, the sound of turbine engines might actually be even better than a V8 or V12.

Why bother with the battery?

You say the micro-turbines power the car when the battery is empty and go on to say the car will do 560 miles on a tank of petrol, or approx. 90 miles/litre. Why bother with the extra weight of the battery if you can get that sort of mileage?

Though I am a little confused as to how two 70 kW power sources are supposed to supply four 145kW motors. I suspect the 0-60 figure is not quite so impressive in this mode of operation.

Efficiency / low emissions...

I presume that a lot of the efficiency and low emissions come from the petrol driven generators being able to run at a steady rate, not having to rev up an down madly to keep up with a driver's requirements?

Practicality vs Tesla

Surely this concept is hugely preferable to a Tesla given the bad experiences that some of the testers have had on even quite modest trips with running out of battery charge.

Of course this thing is hugely heavier (probably), faster (at least on top speed) and is undoubtedly going to cost a lot more than the Tesla, but if it can be made to work, then you could even imagine using this on a long journey. The turbines no doubt cost a lot, but then so do the batteries in a Tesla.

There is also, of course, not comparison between the range under electric power and that of the fuel tank. The latter is simply a convenience issue for most people of how frequently you have to fill up (I don't see this thing crossing trackless deserts). The range of a purely electric car is a completely different issue as with contentional batteries you are in for a very long wait of many hourse before you can set off again, and that's assuming you can find a suitable high-power electric supply.

Turbines

Excellent work. Light spirit burning turbines have got to be the most future-proof power plants at the moment. Just wondering though as they can't be all that heavy, why they have evidently chosen to mount them behind the seats. The nose with that huge air intake looks a more obvious position.

Beautiful

That's beautiful. They should make it.

For the confused, 4 x 195kW is only the peak output

as you may have noticed, you don't drive your car absolutely flat-out all the time: you only need big gobs of power when accelerating. The rest of the time you cruise along using very little.

This drivetrain is pretty much identical to that used in the Chevy Volt, but with turbines instead of the Volt's reciprocating engine.

Remeber the Deltics

This kind of idea is not too new, there used to be railway locos that were diesel - electric for just the same reasons, keeping the revs constant for efficency and oodles of torque for accelerating. We used them a lot on the East Coast mineline before electrification I think. I think also that the 125 HSTs were diesel - lectric too, great locos!

Love the idea of using micro-turbines to drive the gennies and it might not be too expensive to impliment as some would think. There are quite a few model aircraft turbine engines out there nowdays, it doen't take a great leap to see some of these designs being scaled up to provide generation capabilities for vehicles. I'm actually suprised that I haven't seen this idea before.

As for the bodywork, this is a matter of individual taste - but it's damn sexy!

Be interested to see what Clarkson and his merry men make of this ...8-)

mpg / battery questions

@Keith Williams: I work it out as about 42mpg which, whilst not that good in terms of really efficient cars is about twice what you would expect from a car with similar performance (and obviously weight - jags are not built with sublety in mind).

RE: "Why have a battery at all" type questions: I see teh argument with regards to long trips but if you can manage your daily commute in under 60ish miles then you would just be using battery and so would never need to burn the old fossils - I assume you can charge the battery from the mains but even if you can't then it would be trivial for Jag to make it so you can.

RE: Jag never build the concepts: Sadly that is true. However assuming the technology is actually acheivable rather than just pie in the sky wishful thinging then soon you could end up with an affordable family car that performs well, runs solely on mains power for the school run but seamlessly can be used for long trips to see Granny or to pop to the country. The technology here seems to my non-expert eyes not much different to what would happen if you added a mains charged battery to one of the diesel electric powerplants that have been running trains for the last 50 years.

However, having seen the pictures of the concept Jag, I to have suffered a "crisis".