Saw some sort of beemer plugged into the only charging point I'm aware of in town today (the Leaf owner usually there may have been pee'd off). A low coupe (2-seater jobby?).

I always thought locomotive and ship style generator systems would be the natural development for hybrid systems in cars and no doubt in time other road vehicles.

Likewise. Could even be done using a compact gas turbine to drive the generator to charge the batteries, as turbines run very efficiently at high rpm and can burn pretty much any fuel you give them.

Didn't Jaguar have a hybrid concept using a tiny gas turbine?

I always thought locomotive and ship style generator systems would be the natural development for hybrid systems in cars and no doubt in time other road vehicles.

I think you're right. There have been vehicles with electric transmission in the past, notably Tilling-Stevens petrol-electric buses in the 1920s and 1930s. This made the buses much easier to drive as there was no clutch or gearbox to bother with but their downfall was they were less efficient that normal buses, which in those days had manual gearboxes and at that time diesel engines were superceding petrol ones in large commercial vehicles.

But combine electric transmission with batteries and regenerative braking, and you have a hybrid, which is generally more efficient than an equivalent vehicle with a manual gearbox. Add more or bigger batteries and a plug-in charging capability and you have a hybrid which can cover significant distances on battery power alone - a range-extender. I think the range-extender hybrid will become the norm in the future, with probably a 3-cylinder diesel turbodiesel, tailored to run at a constant optimum speed, powering the generator. Development of pure battery electric cars and range-extender hybrids is likeley to go hand-in-hand as much of the technology is applicable to both. And the tecnology is applicable to vans, light trucks and taxis as well, leading to a greater economy of scale.

Edited by Sofa Spud on 09/01/2015 at 11:54