hrichards's comments

Seems like a good time to ask this question that has been bugging me forever, since all the HN jet nerds will be drawn to this thread:

Why hasn't anyone made a hybrid car that uses a gasoline-powered turbine generator to charge its batteries instead of a piston engine?

I'd imagine that hooking up such an engine directly to the drivetrain like in a Prius would be difficult, but surely a small turbine with one hell of a muffler running a generator (similar to a natural gas power plant), both running only at their peak efficiency RPMs, would yield a very efficient car that could still use the extant gasoline infrastructure.

I'm sure there are very interesting reasons, either due cost, noise, reliability, or durability, that this idea hasn't taken off, and I'm very interested to hear y'all's thoughts on the subject. Or maybe there has been progress in this area, and I'd love to see some links!

I realize you mentioned the South because of the heat and not the food, but as a fellow Southerner who used to also have bad heartburn, may I recommend cutting out ice and sweet tea, if you use them? God, I love them, but I realized after long suffering with heartburn that iced drinks and sugar in my tea was killing my stomach. Cutting these out means I'm now the only member of my family not constantly popping Tums.

Interestingly, all the Southern grannies knew this: they distrusted ice and made their tea with a pinch of baking soda, although this does change the flavor a bit.