Wasn't there a turbine-powered car at one point that would run on just about anything and was very reliable but got canned because of the high production cost?
"When JET 1 was launched, the gas turbine ‘jet’ engine was seen as a symbol of modernity and of British technical prowess. Many viewed it as the power source of the future, but test driving showed that its poor fuel consumption and slowness to respond to the throttle made it unsuitable for road transport."
Gas turbines are efficient when they are allowed to run at optimal speed, which is close to the maximal power. Cars starts and stop all the time which is not optimal. In addition, acceleration is poor, which most car owners would find unacceptable. For uses where they can run for a long time on optimal speed, like in power plants, they are a good fit, otherwise not so much.
Yes. In the past turbines were very inefficient. Much higher compression ratio and thus efficiency nowadays. But piston engines have also improved.
One problem with jets is that they don't scale down so well because of clearance issues.
Also they might need a secondary system to take energy from the hot exhaust gases. GE has proposed supercritical CO2 cycles for that. Could get total efficiency close to diesel, maintenance windows might be more frequent though.
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co25218...
"When JET 1 was launched, the gas turbine ‘jet’ engine was seen as a symbol of modernity and of British technical prowess. Many viewed it as the power source of the future, but test driving showed that its poor fuel consumption and slowness to respond to the throttle made it unsuitable for road transport."
Gas turbines are efficient when they are allowed to run at optimal speed, which is close to the maximal power. Cars starts and stop all the time which is not optimal. In addition, acceleration is poor, which most car owners would find unacceptable. For uses where they can run for a long time on optimal speed, like in power plants, they are a good fit, otherwise not so much.