Ariel Hipercar ( Micro-Turbine Hybrid )

Technology Electrified Vehicles
1

so the Hiperar ( yes it is spelled with an i not a Y )

image
image1800×1012 131 KB

is basically an EV with four motors ( one per wheel ) and that is pretty standard for an electric hypercar - both Nevera and Evija use that approach … what makes Hipercar different is a Micro-Turbine range extender …

these Micro-Turbines are nothing new, and the one used by Ariel i think is the Delta-Cosworth as explained in this video

basically imagine the electric turbo from the new 911 Hybrid and use just that turbo by itself - without the rest of the engine. and replace the intercooler with a heat exchanger and integrate the catalytic converter into the combustion chamber - voila ! you have the Delta-Cosworth Catalytic Generator

of course the 911 Hybrid turbocharger by itself only makes 11 horsepower and Delta-Cosworth makes like 50 horsepower - the actual number is irrelevant really - because the vast majority of power comes from the battery pack. the Micro-Turbine is only a range extender so you don’t get stranded somewhere if you run out of charge.

this is not a new concept. i was still a kid living in Kiev when i saw on TV that Volvo developed a turbine hybrid car. YES VOLVO WAS THAT FAR AHEAD OF THE TIMES. even the Volvo i drive now was ahead of the times by a fair bit.

so why are micro-turbines finally going commercial now when Volvo already tried and failed decades ago ? the answer is simple. it wasn’t the turbine that failed the Volvo hybrid - it was the battery.

at the time when Volvo Micro-Turbine Hybrid failed EVs were not even something people talked about. today EVs are the norm.

also in New Zealand there was a semi-successful micro-turbine hybrid Bus that used a Capstone ( company from California ) gas micro-turbine … though this bus was discontinued.

by the way “micro” in “micro turbine” has nothing to do with size, but rather a lot to do with cost. it’s just a different type of turbine. a normal turbine looks like this:

image
image1920×1080 211 KB

the operating principle is similar but micro-turbines are much cheaper, making them viable in applications like passenger cars whereas real turbines are too expensive even for entry-level aircraft.

2

the reason Turbines ( both real ones and micro ) are only used in planes and generators ( and Abrams tank ) is because they are only efficient under full load.

a plane engine is always under full load thus there is no reason to use anything other than a turbine because turbines are light, powerful and reliable.

a power plant is part of larger grid consisting of many turbines so when load is less than full some turbines can be taken off line and remaining ones can continue to run at full load.

for Abrams tank efficiency is not important because that’s what taxpayers are for - to fund the war machine - instead the reason Abrams uses turbine is because it can run on any fuel - it can run on Diesel, Gas and Jet Fuel alike - that can be important in a war.

conversely these are also all reasons why nobody uses turbines in regular cars despite many failed attempts.

it is not a huge benefit for a passenger car to be able to run on Jet fuel or Kerosense … though Turbine ability to run on Ethanol may in future become a benefit because Alcohol is renewable.

and it is extremely inefficient to spin the turbine at constant 100,000 rpm even when the car is at a red light but that’s how turbines roll - they operate at a constant 100,000 rpm. they don’t rev like reciprocating engines.

so a turbine ( or microturbine ) is worthless as an engine for a passenger vehicle … however as a GENERATOR to recharge the battery of an EV - that’s another story !

as a Generator a micro-turbine is lightweight, efficient and reliable - it also has no vibration and can run on any fuel such as Alcohol.

the real competition to Micro-Turbine as a range extender is not a combustion engine - but a DC Fast Charging station. because you can charge the latest electric Porsche in about 15 minutes at which point the question becomes - why bother with the turbine ?

and the answer is - what makes you think somebody will invest money into charging stations available where and when you need them ? what makes you think you won’t spend an hour in line behind some slow-charging vehicle like Chevy Bolt that takes over an hour to charge before you can charge your Porsche in 15 minutes ?

and finally - not all battery chemistries are created equal. LiFePo chemistry for example is cheaper and has 10 times the power, safety and reliability compared to chemistry used by Tesla and yet it is only used in Tesla’s cheapest car - why ? because it has shorter range, and EVs are sold on range.

if your EV has a range extender you no longer have to use whatever chemistry has longest range - you can use a lower cost, safer and more reliable chemistry like LiFePo.

( continued below )

3

so we established that Micro-Turbine is a potential alternative to DC fast charging when it comes to extending the range of EVs … but how does it compare to Plug-in Hybrid tech, like what i’m driving now ?

well with PHEV the requirements for battery are even more relaxed than with a Range-Extended EV because a PHEV engine can both make more power AND stay efficient at partial loads as low as about 5% so whereas a microturbine can only be efficient in a narrow power range of about 20 to 40 hp a PHEV engine may be efficient in a much wider range of about 10 to 200 hp. that means there is a lot less work for the battery to do …

so what’s the problem ? the problem is that start stop cycles are bad for the engine. the way PHEVs operate ( as opposed to EVs with a Range Extender engine ) is the engine turns on and off multiple times a day. This means that the engine in a PHEV essentially experiences more cold starts than an engine in a regular car which is very bad.

additionally the catalytic converter for reciprocating engines needs to be hot to clean the exhaust - which is why every time Hybrid engines start they run a special cycle to heat up the catalytic converter which is basically wasting fuel.

with a Delta-Cosworth Catalytic Generator not only is the Catalytic integrated into the combustion chamber but due to the nature of Range-Extended EVs the Turbine runs CONTINUOUSLY rather than intermittently.

the combustion process is also continuous rather than pulsed.

all this adds up to both cleaner exhaust and greater reliability.

4

so are we going to see EVs with microturbine range extenders like Ariel Hipercar on the roads soon ?

probably not.

Cost is actually not the main issue. As i explained the Micro-Turbine Generator is basically like the Electric turbo removed from the Porsche 911 Hybrid - it is CHEAPER than a modern car engine which also feature a turbine IN ADDITION TO a reciprocating engine.

the real problem IMO is that such cars would just be too good, and we will not be allowed to have them.

they won’t be BANNED per se but rather they simply won’t be subsidized in the way EVs are.

remember we already tried Range-Extended EVs like BMW i3 REX and they died out. why ? regulations …

in order to quality for California incentives i3 REX had to limit the size of a fuel tank to just 1.9 gallons. yes that is ONE gallon. so you lugged around the combustion engine but could not use it due to regulations. of course BMW could have put a larger tank in i3 REX but then they would lose the incentives at which point it would be cheaper to just do a regular EV ( which are heavily subsidized ).

so this is why we probably won’t see Micro-turbine extended EVs like Ariel Hipercar … because while a few thousand $ of incentives makes no difference to a hypercar buyer it makes ALL the difference for the average car buyer.

it’s a cool tech that actually works and makes sense but the government doesn’t want you to have.

because your government doesn’t believe in freedom of mobility for anybody but themselves.

when i was a kid nobody talked about car range - you just got in a car and drove down to Florida - or up to Canada - it was a total non-issue. Your government together with WEF and the Urbanists have worked very hard to make sure the next generation will never experience this level of freedom and if somebody makes a micro-turbine car they will make sure to write legislation that will make it unaffordable to an average buyer just like Biden recently passed 100% tariffs on EVs from China.

Understand - we are no longer living in an era where our possibilities are limited by technologies - going forward our possibilities are limited by government - and i don’t mean by anybody we elect, but by globalists in the WEF and their minions like the Furry Urbanists.

5

as for Ariel Hipercar if you want to learn more about it there is plenty of information on the internet, plenty of videos on YouTube.

i just used it to make a point that Micro-Turbine tech is not something theoretical but something that EXISTS AND WORKS TODAY.

but you will never get :slight_smile: