Now, my general policy with hybrids is “AVOID”. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they aren’t any good, but people keep buying them, and it sickens me. This is a bit different from your average hybrid though. It’s called the Capstone CMT 380, and it’s got 96 lithium-ion batteries doing the electric power, but instead of an internal combustion engine working with it, you get a biodiesel-powered micro-turbine, essentially a jet engine.

Pardon the lack of pictures, as it’s hard to find a good picture of it, but I’ll try and compensate with some details. The car has an electronically limited top speed of 150mph, which isn’t much, but it accelerates from 0-60 in just 3.9 seconds, which should be plenty.

The range is 80 miles on the battery, and 500 miles with the turbine. Capstone claims emissions are “ultra-low”, but no exact figures are available.

Capstone usually makes micro-turbines to power office blocks, which is where they’ve gotten the turbine from. The car itself was designed by Richard Hilleman though, a video games millionaire.

They plan to make 10 to 15 cars, each at a price of about 285,000 USD. They will probably be sold in kit car form.

Sounds interesting, but I’m still not too convinced. There aren’t enough details on it to judge.

Source: Autocar