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> In fact, just a couple decades before his birth, both electric and steam-powered vehicles — which were cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than early gas
by MisterTea 2y ago
> In fact, just a couple decades before his birth, both electric and steam-powered vehicles — which were cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than early gas-powered cars ...
While I agree that electrics are clean steam vehicles still use combustion and were not as efficient as a piston ICE. Plus the driver had to play boiler operator and ensure there was a steady fuel supply and feed water. Kinda stopped reading after that matter-of-fact hyperbole and just skimmed the rest.
There are some neat videos of vintage British coal fired steam trucks which are really neat (they sounds like mini road steam locomotives) but the emissions make a burning tire seem clean.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoElectricity was cleaner than gasoline, and steam was more powerful than the gasoline at the time. The article did not claim either was both.
- jessriedel 2y agoLand yachts and nuclear trains are cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than cars.
- hollerith 2y agoSure, but in the next sentence it asserts that either electric or steam couldve replace ICE in vehicles, which is true only if you ignore air pollution (and fuel efficiency) in the steam scenario.
- hollerith 2y agoICE is a better tech for vehicle motors because IC compresses air by a factor of about 10 before combustion, which is much more efficient than combustion at atmospheric pressure as is done in a steam boiler.
- meindnoch 2y agoI don't know, Jay Leno's Doble looks pretty clean to me: https://youtu.be/rUg_ukBwsyo https://youtu.be/rUg_ukBwsyo
- genter 2y agoIronic you would post that, since Jay Leno was also badly burned by his gasoline-fueled steam car.
- SoftTalker 2y agoAs a reasult of a fuel leak, IIRC, nothing particularly specific to the fact that the car uses steam for its engine. The advantage of the Doble design however is that it doesn't have a high-pressure boiler per se, it has a steam generator. This would help address "the occasional propensity of early steam cars to explode" that the article mentions.
- MisterTea 2y agoWhats the efficiency? No matter how clean it looks it's still burning fuel and releasing pollutants.
- rsynnott 2y agoSteam turbines can certainly be much more efficient than internal combustion engines, though there’s a scale factor; I’m not sure that a car-sized one would be.
- card_zero 2y agoHere's a photo from 1902 of some people riding on little steam cars to play a polo match: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_polo#/media/File:Dedham_Polo_Club_auto_polo_in_1902.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_polo#/media/File:Dedham_P... Not sure what point I'm making but they look unexpectedly nimble.