Gas turbine Land Rover and leading electrical machine company SR Drives, is to produce the world’s first commercially viable - and environmentally friendly - gas turbine generator designed specifically for automotive applications. The common turbocharger for gasoline or diesel engines is also a turbine derivative. The first serious investigation of using a gas turbine in cars was in 1946 when two engineers, Robert Kafka and Robert Engerstein of Carney Associates, a New York engineering firm, came up with the concept where a unique compact turbine engine design would provide power for a rear wheel drive car. After an article appeared in "Popular
Gas turbine locomotive use a mechanical transmission to deliver the power output of gas turbines to the wheels. Owing to the difference in their speeds, this is technically challenging and so a mechanical transmission did not appear until ten years after the first electric transmissions. The first gas turbine-mechanical locomotive in the world, Class 040-GA-1 of 1,000 hp was built by Renault in 1952 and had a Pescara free-piston engine as a gas generator. It was followed by two further locomotives, Class 060-GA-1 of 2,400 hp in 1959–61. The Pescara gas generator in 040-GA-1 consisted of a horizontal, single cylinder, two-stroke diesel engine