Cars and their Power Sources Cars are becoming incredibly fast and they seem to be more reliable than ever. We now have a choice which didn’t exist when I was younger on what we want to power our cars. We can opt for electric power, gas or hybrid which I think will be disappearing as soon as we get decent range on batteries. I am not a prophet but I suspect cars will start to become a lot lighter as cheaper lightweight materials make it into the auto industry. If everyone eventually had very light weight cars which were at least as strong as the ones we drive today, they might be able to be made safer. I remember interviewing a man who was an engineer for an Indian car company named Tata. What was important about this interview was the fact their car ran on air. It was compressed air to be exact. Can you imagine a car running on such a cheap fuel? It is true you would have to pay for a compressed tank of air, but after the first tank you would only be paying for refills. Here is the incredible part, I have talked to people about this, people who should know and they indicated to me the current gasoline engines in cars could easily be modified to run on air. There have been all sorts of fuels suggested for cars, but I think the most interesting one is using cosmic rays. Tesla had written in the Brooklyn Eagle, a famous New York City paper at the time that he had harnessed cosmic rays as a power source. He had discovered there were particles coming from the sun which contained energy and these particles were in addition to sunlight which he also mentioned. He also mentioned using sunlight in such a particular way he had to be talking about solar energy. His idea which he wrote about was using the sun’s rays to heat a large tank of water and then using the steam produced to drive a turbine. I am not clear if this also had an automotive purpose. Could this have been used to power a steam car? Tesla said in the article he wrote that he was successful in powering a motive device using cosmic rays. Mysteriously the plans vanished. Steam cars actually held the land speed record at one time. If it wasn’t for the fact they had a lot of inconvenience attached to them they may have ruled the roost. You had to wait for the boiler to heat up after you started the fire and there were tubes attached which had to be kept clear. The steam engine ran out of power quickly. The Stanley Rocket set the 1906 speed record of 127 miles per hour. Steam was experimented with for centuries. The first steam powered vehicle was created by Father Ferdinand Verbiest in 1672. How many of us have been behind a bus and took the time to read a sticker which was on the back which stated this vehicle is powered by natural gas? There are quite a few other vehicles which use it because it is so clean. It comes in a form called LCNG which stands for liquefied compressed natural gas but there is another form of gas known LNG which is liquefied natural gas. The difference is LCNG is used mostly for cars and LNG for trucks and other large vehicles. Let’s not forget diesel fuel, one of the biggest rip offs in fuel. It takes less refinement to create a gallon of diesel fuel than gasoline yet it is far more expensive. In New York it is treated with a dye so it can be detected if someone uses it to heat their home when they have an oil burning furnace because it is still cheaper than using home heating oil many times so homeowners who are trying to save a little money are punished with fines. I have to hand it to those people who purchased diesel engines in their cars and used cooking oil the restaurants were throwing away to fuel their cars. I don’t know if it is true but some have said at least a few restaurants now charge a small amount to buy their old oil. At one time the fuel of the future was ethanol. It is alcohol. Gasoline performance is rated by octane. The higher the number the more powerful the fuel. Ethanol is added to most gasoline sold in the United States but there is a tiny amount of gasoline sold in some places which is Ethanol free. Ethanol improves the octane numbers for gasoline thus making the mixture more powerful. Biodiesel is different from diesel fuel. The difference is diesel is a petroleum product and biodiesel comes from plants. An example of biodiesel is soybean oil mixed with alcohol. This produces a methyl, ethyl or propyl fuel. It can even be blended with diesel fuel. When we look at the automotive industry today it is turning out the old days are here again. In case you don’t know what I am getting at, I will tell you. At the turn of the 20th century many of the cars were electric, far more than any other type. They didn’t have much range with their lead acid batteries and they didn’t go very fast with their small motors. What most people don’t know today is the fact when the combustion engine took over, electric power never completely disappeared. It persisted in vehicles like vans which were used on small routes such as a milk run. This went on for most of the century and then things in the electric vehicles market began to change. The big three with some other companies put out some test electric cars and let people lease them. Most of the people loved them and when they went to renew their leases the car companies wouldn’t let them. They tried to buy the cars after that and the companies still denied them and took the cars away. Here is where things got really strange. The cars were gathered up and crushed. It looked to me the oil companies might have seen the electrics as a future threat and taking the long view we are seeing the story unfold today. Electric cars are starting to make a dent in the market and it is beginning to look like there will be no holding them back this time. As batteries get better and the cars get easier to charge who wouldn’t like to own a quiet, fast and capable electric car?
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