Toyota Way Ahead of it's time

Came across this while looking at some Hybrid buses that are going to be used by San Bernadino Omnitrans when I came across this

http://www.itv-motoring.com/features/industry/2003/1383.asp
http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/k_forum/tenji/01-e.html

Apparently, Toyota has been making hybrids since 1977. This particular car also used a turbine instead of a piston engine to drive the generator.

I've know from a Popular Mechanics article that internal combustion/electric hybrids have been around as early as the late 1914. Even then, there were some words of a hybrid built in 1897 which was invented by Hiram Percy Maxim.

I'll give them my own cheer just because gas prices here are annoying me

There has been a lot of hybrid experimentation over the years. The Toyota GT800 from your link appears to have been a series hybrid. When turbines became practical in the 1950s and 60s, there were many attempts to put them to use. The power characteristics of a turbine does not match the needs of an automobile very well, so the hybrid drive was one of many attempts to make it work.

That's the niche for hybrids; combining power sources to reduce or eleminate drawbacks of one or both of them.

If you look through history, quite a few engines were used to drive cars. Steam, sterlin, turbine, airplane prop, wrankler or rotary, wobble, 2 stroke, electric, akinson, just to name a few. Seems the 4 stroke works best with gas for cars and diesel for trucks.

Electric (baker electric)was better back then when steam was the other alternative. It was ready to go, quiet and no worries of explosions. Someone was killed a few months ago in VA from a steam engine exploding at a steam engine show for example. FYI, between the baker electric and gm ev1, the car could only get 10 more miles per charge with almost a hundred years between the designs.

Stanley steamer was one of the popular steam powered car, but you needed to be a pipe fitter and able to operate all 24 valves in the right sequence to drive the car. Jay Leno has one that puts out 800hp with just a 2 cylinder engine.

The turbine and sterlin just lacked the quick speed change for direct drive for cars. They use to have turbine powered trains(santa Fe if I recall correctly), but the noise was just too loud and the rough condition of american tracks caused premature bearing failures. The turbine powered chrysler was more or a turbofan type of deal with indirect combuston, it was ok, but didnt develop the fuel economy expected or acceleration.

I think the sterlin and turbine engine would work great with a serial hybrid car. These are known to work well at a constant speed, run on multifuels and are low maintantence. You can find models of sterlin engines in most science catalogs that run on the heat from a coffee cup or the palm of your hand. They just need a temperature difference to run. The fuel just provides a heat source to cause a pressure imbalance to make it work.

Trains are hybrids too. Most are diesel/electric. The engine runs a generator that is switched to run a pair of motors on the dollys on the track. Some of the older cable cars would use the line voltage to drive and when going downhill it would use regen braking and put power back into the lines. I think the gg1 is an example of this type of train car.

cobb said:

They use to have turbine powered trains(santa Fe if I recall correctly), but the noise was just too loud and the rough condition of american tracks caused premature bearing failures.

Click to expand...

Actually, that was the Union Pacific. See here. They were actually quite successful for a while despite the noise and low efficiency, producing 8500 HP each with the latter units. They eventually became uneconomic to operate when cheap Bunker C oil disappeared with the advent of new cracking techniques which enabled it to be refined into more profitable petroleum grades.

Trains are hybrids too. Most are diesel/electric. The engine runs a generator that is switched to run a pair of motors on the dollys on the track.

Click to expand...

Yes, and that system has more or less been used ever since diesel locomotives were made in large numbers beginning in the 1940s.

Some of the older cable cars would use the line voltage to drive and when going downhill it would use regen braking and put power back into the lines. I think the gg1 is an example of this type of train car.

Click to expand...

Most modern electric locomotives and electric MUs (i.e. subway and commuter rail cars) can do this. The newest generations of NYC subway trains have this capability. Unlike hybrid autos, there is no battery, other than to run the electronics and some lights over dead portions of the track. Because of this, all trains with regenerative braking need a resistor grid to dissipate the power in case the line doesn't have a load to absorb it. Most diesel-electric locomotives also can run in regen mode (termed dynamic braking), although this isn't used to recapture the power. Rather, the power is dissipated in a resistor grid and the traction motors effectively act as generators to slow the train, or to hold its speed on downhills, without the use of friction brakes.

THanks jtr1962, lots of crap rolling around in my head, easy to get stuff wrong.

I swear the jet train was fuel efficient as they could run it at a constant speed and over all it had less moving parts than a standard diesel train engine. I think quite a few stationary generators use jet turbine engines.