Bladon Jets News headline
UK TRADE AND INVESTMENT - 6TH APRIL 2011
Jet-engine maker aims to power cars of the future
Described as the “E-Type for the 21st century”, a super new Jaguar is a “green” electric hybrid vehicle that uses high-tech UK jet-turbine expertise to travel 900 kilometres (540 miles) on a single 60-litre tank of fuel.
The Jaguar C-X75 can sprint from standing to 100km (62 miles) per hour in just 3.5 seconds and achieve a top speed of 330km/h (205mph). At present it is a concept vehicle but it shows the way ahead that the classic performance-car maker is thinking of travelling.
Jaguar’s eco-technology
Despite being a hot sports car the C-X75 is equipped with plenty of green credentials - not just another super-vehicle for “petrol-heads”. It blends superb sporting looks and performance with the latest eco-technology that aims to help tackle climate change.
The attractive C-X75 from Jaguar Land Rover has carbon-fibre bodywork, wrapped around an aluminium chassis and powered by lithium-ion batteries that can be charged from a standard mains socket.
It can run on battery power producing zero emissions for about 110km (68 miles) using four electric 145kW (195 brake horsepower) motors, each one driving each wheel.
Then, the C-X75’s range can extend to 900km (540 miles) on a single 60-litre tank by firing up two super-efficient, micro gas turbines to generate the extra electric power for the batteries - with minimal emissions of 28g/km of carbon dioxide.
The gas turbines are made by award-winning UK company Bladon Jets that leads the world in developing micro gas-turbine engines for cars and power generation.
Bladon has refined that technology to produce much smaller, super-efficient micro turbines for Jaguar under a UK government programme.
The C-X75 incorporates two Bladon Jets gas turbines that are ideally suited for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, providing a lightweight, multi-fuel alternative to the 100-year-old combustion engine used in most cars today.
A Jaguar spokesperson said that the C-X75 “demonstrates that it is possible to retain Jaguar’s core values of performance, design and luxury using technology that will make environmentally responsible performance and electrical vehicles a practical proposition.”
Its turbines give advantages over a conventional piston engine. With fewer moving parts, turbines do not need oil lubrication or water cooling systems, thus offering considerable weight saving. They can be run on a range of fuels including diesel, biofuels, compressed natural gas and liquid petroleum gas.
Priced at £200,000 the super-car was recently unveiled to industry acclaim at the Paris Motor Show and proved to be a star attraction at Los Angeles.
Bladon’s Jets’ technology
“The problem with electric cars is their range,” said Bladon Jets’ finance director Gary Lamb. “You can only drive 50 or 100 miles [80-160km] before having to stop and charge the batteries. To solve this you need to have an alternative power source.
“Traditional piston-driven car engines as used in many current generation hybrids are heavy and can only operate using a single type of fuel - petrol or diesel.
“By comparison, gas turbine engines are very light - 3kg compared to over 100kg for a piston engine - and have only five per cent of the number of parts, making them simpler to produce and maintain. Moreover, they can be designed for multi-fuel operation, so putting a gas turbine into an electric vehicle makes a lot of sense,” added Gary Lamb.
With development ambitions, Bladon Jets has raised £500,000 from members of the UK’s Oxford Investment Opportunity Network, Europe’s leading technology investment network.
Furthermore, India’s multinational company Tata has announced it is making an investment in Bladon Jets. Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and employs 16,000 people in the UK.
JLR reported a 19 per cent rise in global sales during 2010, attributed to strong market performances from the UK, the United States and China.
Sales were up for every quarter compared with 2009. JLR’s largest growth market was China - up by 95 per cent. In the US, the group saw an 18 per cent rise.
Land Rover vehicles delivered a very strong performance in most of its 102 markets with retail sales up 25 per cent globally. The brand’s top five markets are the UK, the US, China, Italy and Russia.
Bladon said the success of the technology is that the turbine engine does not power the car wheels but generates electricity to charge the batteries as and when required, doing this efficiently and cleanly.
Gary Lamb continued: “There have been a number of attempts to use a turbine engine to power a car previously - but [by] driving the wheels. This has a number of problems. Firstly, turbine lag, which is a short delay between putting your foot on the accelerator and the power being delivered to the driving wheels, rather than the instant response got from an electric engine, for example.
“And 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,” added Lamb.
Bladon’s chairman Paul Barrett continued: “We want to establish micro gas turbine engines as the range-extending power source of choice for hybrid car manufacturers. But there is also significant potential for our micro gas turbines in combined heat and power units and other small-scale power generating units, not least in India.
“Tata have many different divisions and we are looking forward to exploring the further opportunities for our technology.”
Thursday, 23 February 2012