Fair comment, however, I suppose there’s some waste heat in a steam engine quite apart from that which is lost through warming and subequently cooling the boiler.
The Tesla’s made of carbon fibre, which is environmentally hazardous to make, recharges in a couple of hours (fine if you’re not planning a long trip someplace), and batteries don’t work too well in places like Alaska in the winter. And even though gas hasn’t hit $5/gal. the demand for hybrid cars indicates that folks want alternatives and are willing to pay for them.
A bump because aluminum as a fuel is gaining more traction.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve decided to go the non-profit route and am working on getting a website set up.
This is a complete hijack, but my friend’s dad has a steam powered commercially viable sawmill. The property is strewn with old steam engines, and he’s got most of the drive train and engine of a Stanley Steamer. I think it’s well known that in 1906, the Stanley Steamer Rocket set the world land speed record at 127.7 mph. Pretty amazing.
Tuck
From reading another thread in GQ a couple of days ago, seems
her Majestys govt in England is going after folks who fill up with bio diesel thats not sold in gas stations or something for the road tax.
Your basically talking about a steam powered car, so I hate to ask , where is the govt gonna get its gas vig from.
Declan
No idea why, but even though I got the thread title right the last time about, for some reason this time I kept reading it as “A Case for the Steam Powered Cat.”
Actually, that’s not really all that big of a concern here in the States. AFAIK, the Feds haven’t gone after the folks who have been using grease they’ve gotten from restaraunts. Generally, they only get their panties in a bunch when you try to circumvent the taxes on fuel by running home heating oil in your diesel (both fuels being basically the same thing, only one’s not taxed as much as the other). Of course, if they do start bitching, then I’ll respond with, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” 
Darryl Lict, you don’t suppose he’d be willing to let any of that stuff go cheap, do you?
Its a very interesting idea. I don’t know enough about the technical side to comment. On the business side, if you are still looking for funding etc, have you tried the venture capital/business angels route? There may also be research or green energy grants and similar depending on where you are based.
Other methods I could see:
[ul]
[li]Sponsorship (there are similar projects profit anf nfp that have raised money this way)[/li][li]Venture capital - if a VC trust or business angel will loan you the money to start up you can get the rest of the funding by other means[/li][li]Competitions run through your website/advertising revenue[/li][li]Grants/business startup benefits[/li][li]Partnership with a University[/li][li]Look into an SME engineering firm - if you can get it through as a prestiege project they will make sure you are covered legally.[/li][/ul]
I’d definitely prefer one of those over the methane-powered cat my aunt has.
Problem is, I don’t have any of the credentials that such folks would be looking for, nor do I have the resources to pay folks with credentials to sign off on everything (if I did, I could afford to do it all myself).
That’s true of venture capitalists, but less so of Business Angels. I don’t know if you have worked with any in the past, but the Business Angels I have worked with took the approach that “Of course you don’t have the credentials, your idea isn’t a success yet. Let’s discuss it.”
If you are only looking for 25K, then you are well inside their funding levels. I don’t know if its the same in the US, but in the UK the difference is that the Business Angel usually takes a hands on approach because the person starting up the company isn’t expected to have the same amount of experience and credentials yet. e.g. there is the risk your “angel” is a retired engineering CEO with a passion for cars, who’d rather be hands on. As long as you have detailed plans, that’s usually enough to start the discussion.
A sample business angels network in the US is this one: US Business Angel network I haven’t used them, but if you look at the funding requests, its mainly startups with little experience.