Ok so with all of the inefficiencies of the reciprocating internal combustion engine why don’t they make a hybrid car powered by a small centrifugal turbine that would work like an aircraft APU. The car would have an all electric drive system and the turbine would produce electricity for the electric motor. The FADEC computer would control fuel flow to the turbine as more power was needed. Trains have been doing this for decades so why not cars? A plus would be that you could use any liquid or flammable gas for fuel.
Ok you missed the piont it is an electric car not driven directly by the turbine but buy the electricity produced by a generator connected to the turbine
A single stage centrifugal flow turbine could be machined from a single piece of metal using computerized tools so it would be less complicated to manufacture than an internal combustion engine
I would not consider using and actual aircraft APU I was thinking of something about the size of a turbocharger or maybe a little larger but similar in function to an APU
Get the car moving using battery power then use ram air to help spin up the turbine
As turbines get smaller, they get less efficient.
A 500hp PT6 turbine used .58 lbs of fuel per horsepower per hour, and the engine of an SUV gets about .55.
A 300hp turbine uses about 1lb for ever hp per hour, and a 130hp turbine uses about 3lbs per hp per hour.
There are some cheap turbine engines out there that use parts from turbochargers, but they use nearly 10lbs of fuel for every horsepower they produce per hour.
Those little jet engines in models use a ridiculous amount of fuel for the power they produce, some consume 15 gallons and hour to make 0.8 hp.