Alternative "fuel" I see being perfected in the future.

I had a random thought one day about an alternative "fuel" that was used in the early 20th Century, that I see being perfected in the future.

Anyone know what I am talking about?

Steam.

Video of a 1911 Stanley Steamer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qewjPqeh19Q

Of course, I'm sure it would be a lot after than it was on these cars, but I can see it happening.

Anybody have any thoughts?

I prefer cattle manure as an alternate fuel. It is also a proven product. JB

I prefer dead dinosaurs,, Plenty of it and we have plenty at home we need to F***ing DRILL.

yep theres a lake in like montana or that general are that they say could be one of the biggest deposit know to man but eco nuts say dont drill. but yet it is a safer drill then the one that went fubar in the gulf. explain the logic of hey we can drill here not pay a middle man and at a safe enough depth that if some thing does go wrong humans can fix instead of hope to fix miles below the sea

Heres one -Diesel-oh yeah, we have that, but the enviro douches are trying to ruin that too.

Problem is, none of it will last forever, and we're are using fosil fuels at an alarming rate. I figure we should use the middle east oil before we use ours!

Now an engine built to run on methane would be cool, and it could run on beer farts!

Methane would be good for busses and stuff like that. they use it in denmark i think.It wont happen here since enviro douches will step in again and fine something to protest to help the arabs that fund their groups.

How about grease from fast food joints? It's already being used by a few people & it's definitely renewable as much as Americans like to eat out. The downfall is that it takes diesel motors to run the stuff & still has to be processed. Would seriously cut down on gas prices if it would ever go mainstream.

Another thing to think about is ethanol. It's already in nearly all gas that you buy at the pumps & there are even conversion kits out there to make your car run on pure ethanol. I could see this becoming the next fuel source as gasoline is slowly phased out. Ethanol is corn based in case you didn't know.

Steam? And what exactly are you going to use to heat the water to make the steam? Natural resources? Magic? Water doesn't heat itself.

Didn't say i was going to do it, lol.

If it was done 100 years ago, I'll bet they could do it again.

That's what the engineers are for...I just had the thought.

You're right. They did it 100 years ago with the locomotive. What was used to heat the water to make the steam through the years?
- Wood
- Coal
- Oil

I think the Stanley Steamer used gas...

I'm just saying that although that car is wicked cool, it's using fossil fuels to heat the water. I don't see it as being an example of an Alternative Fuel.

Sorry B-man, I gotta disagree with you on this one. Steam COULD be made by heating up the water with electric coils like an electric stove boiling water. These electric coils would be powered by cell packs, much like hybrid cars of today. While this seems inefficient (steam power in itself is inefficient for cars), it could technically work.

But where do you get the power to recharge those batteries? Anyone else have an idea of what goes into making a LiPo battery? Most of this stuff always boils back down to needing fossil fuels to get their "clean" energy...

All of these ideas are cool pipe-dreams, but I think they're gonna need quite a bit more research and development before I'd accept anything as a replacement for fossil fuel right now.

The batteries would be charged by connecting an "alternetor" or some sort of charging mechanism to the drive wheels so that when the car is in motion it would charge the batteries. An electrical cord could also be plugged in to a typical outlet if the batteries were fully drained. Problem with steam power is thermal efficiency is down to less than half of what an internal combustion engine produces. Therefore this would really designate steam power to smaller vehicles. It can be done & has been done more recently than that old Stanley Steamer:
http://www.saabhistory.com/2008/04/04/the-nine-cylinder-saab-steam-engine/
http://www.steamcar.net/lsr.html

Biodiesel like I mentioned before:
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/biodiesel_basics/

Cellulosic Ethanol. Just an idea, but sounds good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol

Rago, I understand what you're saying, but what happens when those batteries need replacing? They all most definitely go bad at some point or another, regardless of how often they're charged. The problem here is that the process to manufacture the battery itself along with the heavy metals used in making the batteries are several times more dangerous than anything that a gas burning vehicle could put out in its lifetime.

Biodiesel is pretty cool, since you don't really need to change anything on diesel vehicles to run it. The only problem at this rate is the price, and that it could drive up the price of the crops used to make the stuff.

Ethanol is another good solution, but it's shown that in high concentrations that it will cause rust and oxidation in vehicles that aren't properly equipped. That, and fuel consumption would go up since it doesn't burn as well as gasoline

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a clean vehicle, but I'd be more impressed with something that was truly clean alternative fuel, not just "clean" because the end result seems to be.