When You Can’t Pick Between Electric And Jet Power, This Buggy Has You Covered

October 23, 2026 by Tyler August 25 Comments

Technically, what [Macona] built with a surplus Garrett GTP30-150(F) turbine is not a dune buggy, but a sand rail, but it does have the delightfully rare combination of electric and turbine drive that is absolutely worth wading through a 53-page forum thread to learn about.

The turbine came bare as surplus, but [Marcona] used a pair of Kia/Hyundai HSG water-cooled motor-generators to turn it back into something very much like the APU it likely started out as. That’s APU as in “Auxiliary Power Unit” in this context, the little generator that keeps the lights on when your plane is sitting on the tarmac. That went into the sort of frame you’d once have put a VW bug engine in — and the 150 HP off the shaft of the turbine beats anything you’ll get with Wolfsburg’s little boxer motor, even after losses in the generator and motors. Even better, the whole assembly, which uses the electric motor from a Mitsubishi Outlander, likely doesn’t weigh any more than the internal combustion engine and transmission, so whatever you call this little off-roader it ought to move well. It certainly seems to in the demo video embedded below.

What it doesn’t do is sip fuel, the T-62 being rated at 19.3 gallons/hr at full load. Fuel efficiency is definitely not the motivation here. He’s absolutely not saving money, especially not with what jet fuel costs these days. It’s one of those projects done purely for the joy of it — where if you have to ask why, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The vehicle isn’t yet street legal, but [Marcona] is working on it.

If you do like the idea of this kind of series hybrid drive, Edison Motors of Canada is working on bringing it both to semitrucks and heavy trucks, and that is motivated by fuel savings. Continue reading “When You Can’t Pick Between Electric And Jet Power, This Buggy Has You Covered” →

Goodbye Chevy Volt, The Perfect Car For A Future That Never Was

January 8, 2019 by Roger Cheng 164 Comments

A month ago General Motors announced plans to wind down production of several under-performers. At the forefront of news coverage on this are the consequences facing factories making those cars, and the people who work there. The human factor associated with the closing of these plants is real. But there is also another milestone marked by the cancellation of the Volt. Here at Hackaday, we choose to memorialize the soon-to-be-departed Chevrolet Volt. An obituary buried in corporate euphemisms is a whimper of an end for what was once their technological flagship car of the future.

Continue reading “Goodbye Chevy Volt, The Perfect Car For A Future That Never Was” →

Charge Your EV The Portable Way

December 14, 2018 by Jenny List 37 Comments

[Andrew Rossignol] has a slightly unusual plug-in hybrid vehicle, a Cadillac ELR, and his latest project for the car sees him building a battery-powered portable mains charging pack for it in an attempt to increase its range. If this seems to be a rather cumbersome exercise, his write-up details the work he put in trying to hook up directly to the car’s internal battery, and how a 4 kW mains inverter and an off-the-shelf mains charging station were the most practical alternative.

His first impulse was to hook a second supply to the car’s high voltage bus from a supplementary battery pack and inverter, but in this aim he was thwarted by a protection diode and his not wanting to modify the car to bypass it. So the unlikely solution was to take his battery pack from a second-hand Toyota Prius upgrade kit and build it into a frame along with the inverter and charger. The result is something akin to a portable generator without the small gasoline engine, and while it is hardly the most efficient way to transfer energy from a wall socket into a car it does offer the ELR a significant range upgrade.

The cost involved has probably kept away many readers who would like to hack their hybrid cars, so we’ve seen surprisingly few. This home made Geo Metro supplements its forklift motor with a small gasoline generator. Meanwhile [Andrew] is no stranger to these pages, among the several times his work has appeared here are his rundown on OBD sniffing the ELR, and from a while back, displaying graphics on an oscilloscope including a Wrencher.

Dean Kamen’s Stirling Engine Car

November 9, 2008 by Eliot 28 Comments

kamen_car

[Dean Kamen]’s company, the people behind the Segway, have created a hybrid car that uses a Stirling engine instead of a standard internal combustion engine. Stirling engines are closed cycle, meaning heat is applied to the outside of the cylinder walls. They are generally more efficient than standard car engines, but haven’t been used much outside of industrial applications. We suspect that the drivetrain arrangement is similar to the Chevy Volt where the engine is used to charge batteries which are in turn driving an electric motor. This is different from modern hybrids that can have either electric motor or gas engine driving the wheels. The article is unfortunately full of classic [Kamen] hyperbole and minimal detail. He calls the Stirling engine “an insurance policy” for the electric car since it can recharge the battery. That’s right, folks. If you run out of juice, you can put gas in the car. I doubt many Prius owners will fall out of their chair over that. Being a Stirling engine, we’d be more impressed if you could charge the thing by rubbing warm toast on it.

[via Make]