Chinese auto giant Changan‘s subsidiary, Hunan Tianyan, has successfully ignited its first independently developed detachable Power Turbine Generator (PTG), attempting to solve the range anxiety problem for pure electric vehicles.
As the electric vehicle market continues to expand rapidly, pure electric vehicles still face numerous challenges in cold weather range, high-speed energy consumption, and charging convenience. Range anxiety remains a widespread concern among users.
According to the official announcement, the PTG, designed as a modular auxiliary power system, follows a fuel-to-electricity technical approach that can enhance vehicle range and adaptability across various scenarios. Its removable, flexible design allows for quick energy supplementation without altering the main structure of pure electric vehicles.
Hunan Tianyan’s PTG system boasts several advantages, including a more compact structure, higher power density, and stronger fuel adaptability. For the key gas turbine component, the company leveraged its fluid machinery design expertise alongside three-dimensional turbulence numerical simulation to analyse the internal flow fields of the compressor and turbine. Simultaneously, they innovatively developed a high-efficiency ball bearing system, an efficient vaned compressor, and a fixed-guide vane turbine, ultimately boosting turbine efficiency by over 5%.
The electronic control unit, serving as the control core of the system, faces thermal load challenges under high power density operation. To achieve coordination with the vehicle system, high-efficiency cooling channel structures were designed, combined with precision thermal management strategies based on thermal flow field simulation, solving stability issues under high-temperature conditions.
This system is expected to reduce vehicle dependence on battery capacity and cost, with potential applications extending to drone propulsion, outdoor mobile equipment, and various other scenarios.
Editor’s comment
According to the announcement, this is a detachable power generator, which can turn a BEV into an EREV.
Prior to this product, some Tesla owners manually fitted their vehicles with range extenders. This detachable device from Changan’s subsidiary seems to employ the same concept, but is anticipated to be significantly more refined.
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