Science

How many times have we heard about cars that are capable of traveling on little or no gasoline? I know that I have been hearing about them for my entire life and I am no youngster. I even remember when people were talking about modern steam cars that would supposedly get far better mileage than a gasoline powered one. People have talked about electric cars, water powered cars, straight hydrogen powered cars and even atomic powered cars, just to mention a few different ideas. To supplement the power source, there have been ideas put forth such as a flywheel and a super capacitor. The idea was that the flywheel would turn as the car ran winding a huge spring and then at some point, would unwind the powerful spring or even turn an alternator or generator, putting energy back into the automobile. The capacitor was also electrical in nature and once filled with electricity, could return it to the automobile in one quick burst.

Cars generate all sorts of energy even when they stand still. If you don't believe me, try getting into one that has been standing in the hot sun for an hour or so. It will be extremely hot inside. Heat can easily be turned into energy and I am surprised that only now is the automobile industry just thinking about this. As a car moves, it hits air resistance. That can also be used to create energy to put back into the car. As a matter of fact, some military planes have a system that they use when their hydraulics go out. They put a device with spinning blades out the window and this powers a secondary hydraulic system. I mention this to show that you can gain energy just from the wind blowing past the car as it moves. Covering a car with solar cells on the roof also produces some extra energy that can go back into the automobile. Then there is the energy that can be regained every time you step on the brakes. Many hybrid cars are now using this system to help them regain some of the lost power.

General Motors EV1 1999
Photo Source: GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version

There are a lot of ways to regain energy for cars, as a matter of fact cars mirror the state of the United States as a whole. What I am talking about is this, there is no one technology yet that can satisfactorily replace petroleum in powering this country. If we use all the different technologies that are available to us at the same time, there is no doubt that we could replace oil and coal in this country. Cars are sort of in the same position right now. Maybe there is no one technology that can power an automobile satisfactorily, but an electric car with several different methods of replenishing the batteries, that could be made cheap enough, could probably do the job. We have seen individual claims for this method of propulsion or that method, but they never seem to come about. Some say that the oil companies have been squashing every effort and indeed it looks like they have at least interfered on several fronts including developing better battery technology, by buying out companies that were working on this and shelving their products.

1912 Stanley Steamer
Photo Source: GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version

What many people don't release is that there are actually people working on developing a modern steam powered car. One developer claims that the new steam power plant is extremely smooth. He says that it will have none of the sounds that are made even by a modern gasoline engine. He says that there is no way to know that the engine is running, except for the fact that when you press the accelerator the automobile will move. He claims that the engine has advantages over the gasoline engine. One advantage is that there will be a sealed pilot light that will keep pressure up in the boiler at all times and yet only use a few pints of fuel to do it. Rather than need a transmission, it only has a reverse, to reverse the engine, thus making repairs much cheaper and easier, he states. One sticking point is that fuel mileage is about the same as a good mileage gasoline car, but the inventor hopes to improve this. As far as emissions go, he states that it will be far better than the best cars of today and will be able to run on almost any fuel. I bet you thought that the steam car was long dead?

The water fueled car has been spoken about for years. One of the very early ones that I remember being discussed, was a car where you fill the tank with water and drop a couple of pills in. This was said to allow the car to burn the water for fuel. Of course this was nonsense and nothing ever came about from this, although many conspiracy theorists latched on to this and claimed that it worked, but was smothered by the powers that be. These types of cars were even mentioned in some of the popular science magazines years ago. It turns out that some of them were really just schemes to get investors. There has also been claims that there were cars out there that were able to load their tanks with water, but then use some gadget to separate the hydrogen from the water and use it to power the engine. A couple of different types were talked about. The first one supposedly separated water far before it got to the engine and stored the hydrogen in a tank, where it was accessed by the engine as it was needed. The second type was said to be a device that actually separated out the hydrogen as it got to the engine and sent the hydrogen directly into the engine. Neither car is anywhere to be seen today. Much PR was released on the last mentioned system, but it is said that the inventor died. The conspiracy guys said that he was killed to prevent his invention from reaching the market and destroying the need for gasoline.

Toyota Prius Hybrid
Photo Source: PD

Today the hybrid cars are in vogue. Truthfully although they are better than most of the gasoline powered cars, they usually force us to rely on two systems of propulsion in the same vehicle, putting more parts into cars that can fail. They are vehicles that are suited to those who drive locally, since the mileage gains come into play more in this area of city driving. A good diesel engine can actually beat a hybrid in the same car for long distance driving. Hybrids are a stop gap measure and history may regard them as true oddities some day. It seems that a true electric car is the way to go and it certainly is possible to build one. The strange thing is that we have over 100 years experience with building electric cars and yet we have not been able to make a successful one yet. I ask you, why is that? Some will say it is the fault of battery technology, others will say that fuel cells are too dangerous and so on. Could it be that we never really wanted to be successful in this area?

There are a lot of questions that could be asked about automobile technology, such as where is the air car, it was promised several years ago and is running in some places? Why haven't technologies been combined to overcome some of the mileage hurdles that limit the range of electric cars? It is almost like we are banging our heads against an invisible wall as we watch one technology after another fall by the wayside. Could all this be an accident? We were able to get to the Moon years ago, why can't we build a decent electric car?