Forgotten solution for automobiles: Steam car

Steam car
(Pinterest)

Kimmo Huosionmaa

There is one solution from the past, what might be interested some techno-freaks. That thing is the car, what uses steam engines. The idea of steam-engine cars is, that it uses the steam engine and the problem is, that it was complicated to use, and the gasoline motor replaced it, when Karl Bentz and Gottlieb Daimler made the first car, what used combustion engine. 

Steam cars had the oven on the right side and the passenger must put the wood to the oven when the car was in use. There was one thing, what made the steam car able to compete with the combustion car in the early years of the automobile, and that was the ability to use wood as the fuel, but when petroleum stations became common, steam cars remained in history. 

When we are talking with the piston-engine steam cars, they were complicated to use, because the pressure in the system must be raised, before the car was able to move. And when the people wanted to drive their steam cars, they needed to follow the pressure meter all the time, and release steam from the system, if the pressure rises to a dangerously high level. 

And there must be two persons in the car because another one needed to put the wood in the oven. Otherwise, the driver must stop driving, before increasing wood. In the modern time sometimes there were talking about the ability to return the steam car to traffic because it has the capacity to use a different kind of fuels. The liquid fuel can burn in the same grate with gas, and the bottles are easy to put in the car. 

Also, the capacity to use wood makes that car an interesting choice for some people, who are living long away from civilization, but these plans have had very little volume and the planned production number was the only couple of individuals, what was planned a build for experimental purposes. But when we are thinking about the speed of the steam car, they might not quite slow, because if the piston engine would be replaced the steam turbine, what would be put to the axel like, that would go thru it. 

The speed of those cars is high. The last time when the steam turbine was planned to install serially produced car was 1960's when American car industry planned to put the turbine in the car. The steam-Wankel was planned to replace the turbine or Wankel-motor, what have rotating piston because there was no heat exhausted gas. 

Normal turbine released extremely heat exhaust gas, what could burn people. And that's why the engineers wanted to put the steam engine for the car. Making the steam would happen with oil or gasoline burner, what is used in the oil heating system. In some cases, the NASCAR or Indianapolis-formulas have planned to use turbine booster with the normal engines. When the driver needs the power to pass another car, and normal engine power would not be enough, he would release the steam to the turbine. 

The system would be like the normal cooler of the car, what is installed in the side of the motor. And when it wanted to use, the steam would be released to the turbine, what would give extra speed for that car, but these plans have remained in the papers. But the world of technology is the interesting thing, and that's why those kinds of things are nice to investigate and think, what if Karl Bentz would not have gasoline in hands when he made the first combustion engine.