Baldon Jets raises £500,000 to power cars of the future
Bladon Jets has raised £500,000 in a recent funding round from members of the Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION). The company is working with car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover on the development of a micro gas turbine engine to operate in a plug in hybrid car. Unlike other turbine engines, it does not power the car wheels, but generates electricity to charge the batteries as and when required.
The micro gas turbines are said to be ideally suited for plug in hybrid electric vehicles. The company claims the batteries will typically provide over 50 miles of electric range and that the cars are also capable of travelling longer distances when using an on board power generator to charge the batteries on the move. The Jaguar C-X75 super car's range was said to have been extended to 900KM on a single tank of fuel by using the micro gas turbines.
"There have been a number of attempts to use a turbine engine to power a car previously, but driving the wheels," said Bladon Jets' finance director, Gary Lamb. "This has a number of problems. Firstly, turbine lag, which is a short delay between you putting your foot on the accelerator and the power being delivered to the driving wheels, rather than the instant response you get from an electric engine, for example. And secondly, if you run turbines at a variety of speeds, particularly at low revolutions, they are not especially efficient. They are most economical when operating at a constant high speed, as they are when being used to generate electricity."
"We want to establish micro gas turbine engines as the range extending power source of choice for hybrid car manufacturers, said Paul Barrett, chairman of Bladon Jets. "But there is also significant potential for our micro gas turbines in combined heat and power units and other small scale power generating units."
