Back in the early 1980s, General Motors built an Oldsmobile with a turbine engine powered by coal. It was an experiment to see whether the cheap and plentiful coal supply within the borders of the U.S. could be used to power automobiles. Keep in mind that this came after OPEC’s oil embargo that resulted from a war in the Middle East that caused speed limits to lower, and after the Shah of Iran’s exit led to Iranian oil production being halted and causing a global oil shortage. There was also a feeling that oil supplies could eventually run out, so we should be prepared for that eventuality. The coal-powered 1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that General Motors created was one potential way for Americans to be ready for that day.
General Motors was no stranger to the turbine engine. It had been developing turbines since the 1940s, attracted by the turbine’s compact size, fewer moving parts compared to a piston engine, reduced amount of vibration, and its ability to burn nearly any fuel imaginable. The next step was to experiment with a coal-powered turbine in a passenger car.
The coal-powered Oldsmobile ran on superfine coal dust kept in a storage tank and transported into the turbine engine by an air pump to be combusted. GM claimed powdered coal was more efficient than liquid fuels derived from coal, losing only 20% of its thermal energy compared to 45% for coal-based liquid fuels.
What else should you know about GM’s Coal-Powered Oldsmobile?
There has never been a turbine-powered GM production car or one that was powered by coal. There were numerous obstacles to making turbine-powered production cars that General Motors, as well as Chrysler and its turbine car, could not overcome.
General Motors actually built two coal-powered turbine car concepts, the other being a 1977 Cadillac Eldorado. In a review of the Cadillac by the Christian Science Monitor, the publication noted the presence of the smell of coal ash, requiring ash-reduction strategies for its removal. The ash also caused particulate matter content to be very high, and the fuel source’s high nitrogen content produced high levels of nitrogen oxides. Nitrogen oxides can irritate your airways, aggravate asthma, cause breathing difficulty, and produce acid rain — not exactly ideal to come out of an exhaust pipe. The 63,000 rpm whine made by the turbine engine was also very loud. And there was the range of the coal-powered car, which held only enough fuel to travel 80 to 90 miles.
What we can take away from GM’s attempt to make an automobile that runs on coal is that this was a noble experiment, attacked from all angles by the company’s considerable engineering talent. Unfortunately, there were shortcomings not only from the coal itself, but also from the turbine engine. This was a time when emission regulations were getting more stringent while fuel supplies remained tight, leading carmakers to search for alternative technologies that could supplant oil and do it cleanly. Coal was not the answer then, but China’s “coal battery” could be a future solution.
