A consortium of three companies including Jaguar Land Rover has won a £15m award from the government's Technology Strategy Board to help it develop a gas-turbine 'range extender' for electric cars.
The consortium includes UK engine manufacturer Bladon Jets, pioneers of the world's first axial-flow micro jet engine (apparently a technology allowing the creation of small, efficient gas turbines), and a company called SR Drives who are owned by the US-based Emerson Electric Co, the world's largest manufacturer of electric motors.
Together, the companies plan to use the cash to develop what they call an Ultra Lightweight Range Extender (ULRE), a compact and environmentally-friendly gas turbine generator for hybrid electric vehicles. The plan is to use Bladon Jets' gas turbine engine, SR Drives' 'proprietary switched reluctance technology' (Eh? Ed), and Jaguar Land Rover's technology integration nous to develop a system ready to be placed in real production cars.
This is not entirely new territory, at least for the 'Rover' part of 'Jaguar Land Rover'. Long before current owners Tata were on the scene, from the early 1940s right up to the mid-'60s, Rover attempted to develop the gas turbine engine (based on the design of Frank Whittle) for use in production cars, most famously in the Rover-BRM.
The parallels with today's project are small, with the very-different modern turbine being developed to extend range rather than to provide the sole power source for a car - but it gives us an excuse to show you a picture of a 1961 BRM T4.
Amusingly, The Technology Strategy Board's website is not working properly (at the time of publication) but we can tell you that it was set up by the government in 2007 on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to look at ways of using technology to benefit business and the economy in the UK.