The biggest problem about the steam engine is that no one will spend tons of money to develop such a risky project.
And eletric cars depend a lot on the country power plant. In France they’re a good idea, since they have a clean power plant, here in Brazil or at the USA it is just a play, where you try to hide the polution that you’re causing. And we have the energy costs too, the people will have a really expensive energy bill at the end of the month.
^This.
I meant to mention that earlier, but I didn’t want to turn this into a war. As RobtheFiend said; electric cars are a completely impractical idea. The electricity demand without cars is already difficult to meet with nuclear paranoia setting in, and think of the infrastructure issues. Hypothetically, even if electrical demands were met… how do you actually charge these cars? They assume using an outlet in your home… but that’s if you have your own house. What about large cities? I live in a 6-floor apartment building, and I park my Altima somewhere outside, next a curb, wherever there is a spot as far as 3-4 city blocks away from me at times… just depends on who hasn’t moved their car today. How do they expect city-dwellers to charge their oversized golf-carts? Is the government going to build charging receptacles on the curbs like parking meters? If so it’ll be taxed to oblivion to actually pay-off that ordeal, and likely back to being more expensive than just using fossils; like electricity is today.
I honestly don’t see a single advantage in an electric car. The environmental impact is moot because modern ICE engines produce very limited emissions, and electrical generation isn’t cleaner unless nuclear or hydro-electric power is used.
Steam power is too impractical for cars. There are too many safety hazards, the system is too bulky, it is inefficient in small-scale, and it has a lot of user inconveniences. Steam is only suitable for stationary or naval power-generation.
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Perfect explanation. Only to complement, hydro-eletric power plants aren’t clean at all. First you have to flood a big area and destroy the habitat, second, the methane produced by the anaerobic decomposition of the live beings that where flooded is huge, and it keeps for years. Then, every dry season will grow trees and another plants at the (not so flooded now) area, then it will fill up again and the methane process will repeat itself, and it goes forever. And just to remember, methane is more harmful to the environment that CO2, that’s why it is usually burned.
The only power plants that can be considerate clean at some point is solar, wind and nuclear.
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Sidenote, steam cars have definitely been a thing before. Jay Leno owns a few and he’s got a few videos on his YouTube channel. They’re pretty interesting things honestly.
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I am all for steam!
John Doble— perhaps the cleverest engineer in the family— also devised a
flash boiler system where kerosene was atomized and ignited with a
spark plug, which then rapidly heated the water inside coiled steel
tubing. This change allowed the new Doble-Detroit to be ready to drive
in as little as 90 seconds after ignition. With these improvements, the
Dobles’ new car company promised a steamer which would provide all of
the convenience of a gasoline car, but with much greater speed, much
simpler driving controls, and a virtually silent powerplant.
There was already a solution to the long startup times of steam in 1916!
Moar REAding!!! on STEAM cars
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Now I’m in love with steam cars 
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##everyone who is on board with steam powered cars.
ever heard of sterling engines? all the advantages of steam engine, but without needing to carry all the water around
and iirc there’s was a truck in the 90s retrofitted with one. it was actually feasible. i forgot what was the reason it stopped
it’s better than steam imo
less parts than both ICE and steam engines. just as flexible.
##everyone that thinks the infrastructure will collapse
you’re thinking with the way we are thinking right now. centralized
more power generation on the power plant needed. bigger/thicker/more wires needed to transport the power, more transformer and stuff. i too agree it may not be feasible or make much sense.
but that’s centralized power generation. make all the power at one place, and transport it.
what if, instead of making the current infrastructure needing to upgraded, the whole infrastructure system just needs to be revolutionized?
think decentralized. think on-site power generation. tesla and solar city is already doing this with their solar powered everything. instead of we demanding more power from the center producer, why not build our own power generation?
we are paying taxes, that are collected, then used to build and maintain the current existing infrastructure. but what if we could just build our own infrastructure for ourselves?
with the current price drop for solar panels, and small wind turbines for homes. i actually can see this possibly be a thing.
of course, this is really forward thinking, and is still just a vision. but it’s a possible alternative to just upgrading our current infrastructure indefinitely, as far as i can see.
it needs regulation, government supports, and so much other problems that i don’t know about yet.
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To me, steam power is only reasonable when either coal or a nuclear reactor is involved… otherwise it is inefficient and pointless. Traditional steam engines have an efficiency of at most 10%, and one using a Rankine cycle; which involves supercritical working fluid and temperatures hovering on the thermal creep limits for steels, can raise that to 20%. What’s the point if our internal combustion engines are already over 25% efficient? We can’t use neither coal nor nuclear power in cars.
For those who are curious… the most efficient steam engine ever built was a stationary 800kW steam generator named Quadrum by Steammotor Finland. It is 27% efficient.
That is very impressive, and a useful application for a steam engine. Cars are not though.
Since everyone is trying to give a suggestion… mine is to increase the efficiency of our beloved internal combustion engine though the means of power-recovery. Utilize power-recovery turbines (effectively a turbocharger that is coupled to the crankshaft instead of being used to compress air), or use heat-recovery methods-(I’m very dubious about those though).
Power-recovery turbines have been used to great effect in the aviation industry. The most notable was the Wright R-3350 Turbo-Compound engine. The power-recovered turbines recovered about 20 percent of the exhaust energy, which was around 450 horsepower (340 kW) that would have otherwise been wasted. Specific fuel consumption was in the order of 0.4 lb/hp/hour (243 g/kWh), giving it a 34% fuel efficiency. Keep in mind that this was a carbureted engine produced in the 1940’s… though I must mention that it ran on 145 octane fuel.
I don’t even want to hear about infrastructure changes. It will not happen. Ever. They can’t even build a new bloody reactor without 15 years of drama.
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THEY?!?!?!?
this revolution would be started by the population, and depends on the population alone. it’s the public that is doing it, not the government. why should we wait for THEY again at that point?
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Yes, because “we” are completely capable of building powerplants on our own without the government.
You can’t even move the stove in your house by 6 inches without a city inspector coming in and granting a licensed person the permit to do so.
Oh, and any “revolution” started by the population is labeled as terrorism these days. Try building a 3-meter high windmill in your backyard… you’ll be indicted for endangering air-traffic, lol.
WAT???
this is a thing???
but then again… what kind of stove is it?
so… you just ruled out solar panels?
edit:
also please tell me about this wind mill law that doesn’t allow you to put a wind mill on your roof.
i googled it. doesn’t seem to be much of an legal issue, and i can’t find anything much than that. i only found something about limiting the height of the said turbines. and literally can’t find anything about inflicting with air traffic except if you live near an airport
Yes, it is city building code here. I assume it only pertains to gas stoves… even though it has almost a meter of flexible pipe back there.
Yes, I ruled out solar panels because of their small power production, large size, limited duration of power production, and limited life-span. I only see them viable as giant solar farms in the middle of a desert somewhere, though at the same time I see solar power towers / heliostat towers as a better alternative. I consider solar panels a gimmick unless they can drop their production costs by an order of magnitude.
you DO know that solar panels prices are going down exponentially right now. right?
Problem is this… in order to build anything onto your house, you require the proper permit. Have fun obtaining a permit for a wind-mill… you’ll have to go through all the process of getting one for a full-size one because there is no category for the little thing you’re building… so it’ll either not be granted at all, or it will cost so much that you can’t afford it.
In short… you can’t easily screw over the gov. They want your taxes for electricity, and you’re going to pay them.
$10 usd a watt. Look, it won’t be cheaper than going to the power company… they’ll make sure of it, or they’re going to lose their business. General rule of why I’m always skeptical of anything new. If someone allowed it to be pushed through, that means it is no less profitable than the previous technology… and that means it won’t cost less for you.
This encapsulates the main reason for the degree of resistance to change in energy production: change is costly and any convincing argument as to its cost effectiveness needs an overly large timeframe of estimate (i.e. decades). For obvious reasons, very few companies like to operate on a time scale where profits won’t be reaped by the people implementing them.
In other news the Australian government actually did go on a massive solar panel rebate push. I don’t know what the uptake was but while the offer is tempting there are many technical difficulties that need navigating before you simply slap on a solar panel on every roof, as attractive as the idea may sound.
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wait… don’t you get paid for the extra power you generate? that should cover some up
at the start of the car industry
“it’s just as expensive and just as fast as a horse drawn. why would we want a car?”
Because in this case, we’ve made the horses run faster, eat less, shit less, pull more while the car could barely move half as fast, is hella expensive, and takes up alot of space that people might not have.
Nuclear is the only way to go.
wait what??? did i missed something?
Comparing the car and horse as an analogy to fossil fuels and alternative energies doesn’t work because currently our fossil fuel plants are running with increased efficiency, less emissions and greater output while the horse can never overcome it’s disadvantages.
Usually I wouldn’t use John Oliver as a source because he presents very one sided information (that is an inherent problem with the type of show he is doing and the time constraints he has) but watch this little segment on the problem of infrastructure currently in the US.
Now tell me a revolution is going to fix everything.