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If you let your rocket engine or electric motor idle without doing any useful work, then they are both 0% efficient.
The Nissan Leaf, when tested by Consumer Reports only provided 85% of the energy used to charge the battery, and that does not consider the percentage of battery capacity that can not be utilized without damaging the battery permanently (about 30%).
The most efficient IC engine is right at 55% and it can run on basically crude oil, virtually unrefined. That engine would not work in your car, with a 3 foot bore and an 9 foot stroke running at 92 RPM.
Turbines used in airplanes are very different from turbines used in power generation. One has to deal with air entering the engine at 100 below 0 and 650 MPH. The other has to not melt in its restricted fixed application. Efficiency increases in power generation turbines can be very high when co-generation is utilized where the exhaust heat is used to generate additional power in a power plant, like making steam for another turbine, instead of thrust in an airplane.
Fuel mileage in cars as well as AVERAGE efficiency could be doubled with a system that was capable of highly efficient short term energy storage that allowed the liquid fuel consuming engine to only run at it's highest efficiency.
regards
Mech
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