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well you're looking too narrowly. Electrical generation plants that burn fossil fuels are a lot more efficient than ICE. The use of ICE is based on the ease of accelleration/torque on demand, lack of long startup phases. If you use an electric motor for the kinetic activities, the the options for generating electricity for the powertrain to use are wide open. Say when the battery gets down to 25% charge, you start up a compact gas turbine, and run it until it's back up to >90% and then shut it off. so the duty cycle is long, no varying torque, something like this: http://www.bladonjets.com/ has only one moving part... should last forever, far simpler than an ICE, and likely more efficient. another product: http://www.capstoneturbine.com... Walmart's gas turbine hybrid truck: http://www.greencarcongress.co...

The best solution would be to have a low power gas turbine (5-10hp) that can charge the car's battery slowly. This way you eliminate range anxiety by allowing the person to realize that they don't have enough juice to complete the journey so they kick in the turbine (or automatically when they set a destination that is beyond the battery's range) which will buy more range.

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And a 5hp turbine charger would be like living in the future.

It looks like you're not the first person to think of this, and you may not have to wait all that long...

"Oil-less carbon-air bearing system"

I am going to call BS...

http://kn.theiet.org/news/sep10/tata-blaydon-jets.cfm

This car is more fuel efficient, lower emissions, faster and more powerful than anything ever produced for the commercial road.

The trick with jet engines is not to run it lower, but use the power to run an electrical engine that can be ramped up and down.

http://www.bladonjets.com/applications/automotive/

"Requiring no water-cooling system, oil or catalytic converter, it will provide vehicle weight savings of up to 15% – with a consequent reduction in fuel consumption and carbon emissions – compared to a piston engine. Further environmental benefits will be gained from its fast warm up (a few seconds, as opposed to several minutes for a conventional engine), cleaner combustion and lower manufacturing energy requirements. "

Here's the turbine from Bladon Jets (Isle of Man).

This is the interesting part. Turbine cars have been built before, but the turbine usually cost too much. Bradon claims "low manufacturing costs", but no numbers are given. Here's a video of the engine, and an interview with the designer. It only cost the company a million pounds to get to this point, which is impressive for a startup.

The turbine wheel is made in one piece, by electric discharge machining in an oil bath. That helps to keep the cost down.

The manufacturer of the turbines in this car is Bladon Jets.

From your link, I just noticed the pencil shown next to the turbine. OMG that is small! Presumably that's not what's in the car though... is it?

How well the turbine has been scaled down. Turbines get harder to make efficent the smaller they are - efficency is quite dependent on things like the ratio of the gap at the edge of the blades to the blade area. Small turbines need a lot more precision manufacturing to make properly efficent.

Looks like the gas turbines used by Jaguar were supplied by Bladon Jets:

http://www.bladonjets.com/news/jaguar-c-x75_-_electric-super-car-powered-by-jet-engines/

More information is available at the website. I haven't had a chance to read through all of it.

Industrial gas turbines hooked up to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) are barely 60% thermally efficient for the latest technology, most are in the 40-55% range. The turbine alone might be 30-35%. Micro gas turbines are between 25-35% and they are not hooked up to an HRSG.

What they do have going for them is a high power to weight ratio, comparable efficiency, and lower emissions because of the fuels they can run on. According to this other article, you're saving 220 lbs when comparing to a similarly powerful ICE.

The manufacturer of the turbines in this car is Bladon Jets.