EcoJet concept car

The EcoJet concept car is a concept car designed to run on biodiesel fuel by using a Honeywell LT 101 gas turbine instead of an internal combustion engine. Basically, it runs on refined cooking oil, and gives off the same kind of smell created by cooking French fries.

This concept car was the result of a collaboration between Jay Leno and General Motors. Unlike other concept cars, which are built mostly for show purposes, it was meant to be driven on the road in a regular fashion as well as for show purposes.

It is a two-seater with two separate gas tanks. One contains the main fuel, a biodiesel soya bean oil, and the other contains a traditional clean burning jet engine fuel. The JP-4 jet engine fuel is used to start the turbine easily at the beginning of a trip and also to run the engine at the end of a trip to clean it since a biodiesel fuel tends to gum up a turbine. The exhaust air is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit in normal operation and 1800 Fahrenheit at full power.

The car has a fully featured Azentek PC running Microsoft Windows Vista, with two LCD screens on the dashboard, one for the gauge cluster and another for the media and navigation controls as well as the standard PC functions such as word processing and Web access through a Wimax system. Two other smaller LCD screens are placed on the dashboard to provide rear views, as the car has no rear view mirrors, using cameras instead. The functions are controlled by Touchscreen or by Speech recognition software using a multiple microphone array.

References

*http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/cars/ecojet_shell.shtml
*http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/autoshows/sema/2006/gmecojetconcept.html
*http://www.motodash.com/article/10283/Azentek-Takes-CES-2008-by-Storm/
*http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/nov2006/bw20061102_790939.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_autos