Comments

If this has been around for 100 years, why hasn't anybody else tried it? I remember reading an article about 40 years ago about the Stanley Steamers which said that they were a better technology than Ford's, but the Stanley Bros. refusal to adopt assembly line production doomed their company. I've always been intrigued by that. I've also heard of carburetors that heated the incoming gasoline with part of the exhaust, giving big gains in fuel economy, but I'm not one of those who believes that the car companies or the oil companies could or would buy up such ideas to keep them off the market. If GM knew how to get 100 miles per gallon in a car people will buy, I think it would build it. What we're seeing now is the result of outsourcing our energy needs for 20 or 30 years without tapping our own resources, based on promises that we can run our cars on sunshine and wind. Maybe someday we will, but if it could be done without putting most Americans back on foot or bicycles we'd already be able to buy them without government subsidies. I believe that the future is in electric cars, but we're going to need a big increase in generating capacity and battery technology. I really wish that media like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics would tell us straight about how much these new cars will cost, when we can buy them and how soon we can realistically be completely energy independent. Too often we get the Gee Whiz! stories, but not the bottom line.