This Wikipedia article says gas powered vehicles took over the market, but doesn’t really say why, unless the long start-up time alone accounted for it. Since there are technological solutions at hand for all the problems originally encountered wth these types of cars, and they have multiple ther benefits over other types (much lower emissionsl more torque at low revs, no need for cmplicated transmissions, etc.) is it possible they might be sold commercially again some day? (When clean-air standards get REALLY strict.)
Another thing that got me on this topic was this thread here. It looks like steam engines can produce almost as much power as gas engines.
While the early steam cars had many advantages over gasoline-powered cars, they had many disasdvantages:
-it took 10-15 minutes (after lighting the burner) to get sufficient steam pressure to drive off
-you lost water with each stroke of the psiton-the limiting factor (in range) was how much water you could carry. early Stanleys had a range of about 50 miles (per tank of h2O)
-in many US states (like NY), the operator of a steam car had to have a steam engineer’s operating l;icense
All of these things drove steamers out of the market-by 1916 , you had relaible gasoline engines, with electric self-starting. Steam cars continued to be made 9until the early 1930’s), but gasoline engines had won.
I recall reading somewhere about an experimental steam car that worked really well, but the executives killed it when they learned even a relatively minor accident could release scalding steam that would turn the situation serious. Rightly, too, I think.
Lear (ever hear of the Lear Jet?) had a steam car project back in the '70’s that never saw production. A Google of “Lear steam car” will bring up a number of references.
Steam is just a way of transmitting power.
Like electricity - and similarly it is not a source of power.
Ummm…'cause steam boilers can explode, really really easily, if not properly maintained?
In contrast, whatever Hollywood or TV may think, cars do not explode. They may catch fire (I’m thinking of you, Ford Motor Co, with your Pintos), but they don’t explode.
Chariots Of Fire
Cue slow inspirational theme music, with a squad of Ford Pintos running in slo-mo down a beach, one by one erupting into flames…
By happenstance, I just finished reading the article on the Doble steam car at the site Damn Interesting in the section alternative energy, and it addresses both production issues as well as reasons that the car was a mechanical success and a production failure. (sorry I can’t link the site)
D
I wonder if this is the origin of the ‘car that runs on water being kept from the public’ myth started?
When I watched that movie, I refused to drink the Iacocca-Cola…or the koolaide. :rolleyes: 
This is a total myth. All Stanley Steam cars had pressure relif valves that would open and vent dangerous pressures in the boiler. in addition, the Stanley boilers were wire-wrapped, and would take a pressure many times that of the maximum safety level. In essence, ither parts of the system 9steam lines to engine0 would blow off BEFORE the pressure could ever rupture the boiler. NO Stanley-build care EVER suffered a boiler explosion.
I saw a Stanley automobile this summer – not a Steam,er, they manufactured other models, as well, although this was a steam-powered car. It was gorgeous, and all the components were kept under the hood and protected. It looked pretty safe, as ralph124c maintains.
IIRC, in the story I heard (referred to in my earlier post) the engineers did not follow the Stanley’s example. They were trying to build a modern car competitive in speed and fuel efficiency with standard gasoline internal-combustion engines, and one result was the creation of a network of cooling tubes to more efficienmtly remove heat from the system that extended beyond the “engine compartment”. And it was the danger of a rupture in that network releasing potentially dangerous steam that nixed the project.
ralph124c also once started a long steamer thread. If he’s not going to reference it, I will:
It eventually veered off into technical detail and an argument you may not wish to follow to the end, but it might be worth looking over.
As has been mentioned, it was the water issue that killed both steam cars and steam locomotives.
There is a way to avoid this problem. By condensing the exhausted steam, the system runs closed loop, and stops to take on water are eliminated. This is done at modern power stations, and was done on steam ships. It is harder for cars and locomotives, because you need a fairly large air cooled condensor (a radiater). But it is still doable…why it wasn’t done requires a longer explaination:
Condensing operation has a serious limitation when applied to a reciprocating steam engine. Critical to the operation of such an engine is the injection of “steam oil” to lubricate the valves and pistons.
After condensing, this steam oil must be seperated from the water before it is returned to the boiler. If not, the oil will be broken down into some corrosive compounds, and other compounds that coat the boiler tubes, leading to corrosion, hot spots, and spectacular and dangerous boiler failures.
Oil seperation is tricky, but doable. Steam ships did it, no problem.
But consider that locomotives and cars need fairly high power density. There is only so much room, and allowable weight for the engine. In order to maximize the power density these needed to operate at fairly high pressure. At the end of the steam era, “normal” locomotives were runnint 200-250 psi and lhigh pressure locomotives were built for operation at over 1000 psi.
And here we come to the problem for condensing operation. With increasing pressure, comes increased steam temperature. Above 100psi the steam oil quickly breaks down, and can’t be completely seperated from the exhaust cum feedwater, leading to eventual failure of the boiler.
On steam ships, which could tolerate the bulk and weight of an engine limited to 100 psi operation, this was not a problem. Available power increases approximatly as the square of pressure, so this limitation would have left a typical steam locomotive or car with only 25% power…a real problem.
Thus steam cars and locmotives HAD to exhaust thier steam to atmosphere.
Steam turbines avoid this problem, as they do not require steam oil for operation. All steam cycle power plants use turbines. Turbine locomotives were built, but by that time Dieselfication was well underway, and the turbines couldn’t catch up.
By the end of the steam car era, all steamers had condensors, but the marketshare had declined such that it didn’t matter at that point.
Stanley basically committed suicide. They didn’t bother updating or improving their models to a significant degree during most of their production run.
None of the steam car companies had a “Henry Ford” at the helm who was interested in mass producing vehicles cheaply. They all thought of themselves as being “elegant” and “sophisticated” and that their customers would never go anywhere else.
The electric starter, along with a lack of condensors on most models during an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in NYC (steamers used to refill their water tanks at horse troughs, this had to stop when they were sealed off to prevent the spread of the disease) enabled the gas powered car to gain a foothold and the rest, is as they say, is history.
The long warm up time really wasn’t an issue on Dobles and a few other models that could produce a working head of steam in less than a minute.
Not so much locomotives. Steam died because diesel-electric was just so much better in multiple ways. Steam locomotives could take hours to start up, and they also needed time after the run to bring them back to a “cold” state (ash removal, etc), and all these things required people (and wages). Multiple steam locomotives couldn’t be run remotely from the lead unit, as is the case with electric and diesel-electric locomotives. Each steam locomotive was another two guys you had to pay, and as even the bigger steam locos tended to be less powerful than their diesel-electric cousins, you needed more locos to begin with. They also incurred high maintenance costs to the permanent way with “hammer blow” to the rails, they were very polluting, and conditions in the cab were often extreme and unsafe. Ask an old-timer retired engineer which he’d prefer, sitting in an air-conditioned diesel-electric cab, or holding rags over his face as the steam loco struggled uphill through its own smoke in a tunnel. For the fireman, you can add some pretty seriously heavy manual labour into the equation as well.
Now, had steam survived somehow, modern steam locomotives would probably have overcome many of these difficulties, but the things above are what killed steam.
Gasoline is a much better BTU carrier than wood or coal, per pound. Pretty much, game, set, match.
One of the things that did Stanley in was the fact that they were expensive and the Stanley brothers refused to put their warrantee in writing. And what a warrantee it was: if it broke, Stanley fixed it for free. Period. But they wouldn’t put it in writing. They considered requests to do so to be a personal affront.
It’s too late to turn back the clock now. I agree that to try to do so would be an interesting technical challenge, but I’m not holding my breath.
However…
One huge advantage of steam powered cars is that it would be much easier to configure a steam boiler to run on a very broad range of liquid fuels. Current internal combustion engines can be configured to run on multiple fuels, but the range of different fuels used is much narrower than is likely to be practical with a steam boiler. Usually, dual fuel vehicles run on gasoline, alcohol, or some mixture of the two. A steam boiler could be easily configured to run on pretty much any combustable liquid. Some inventors have come up with schemes to run steam boilers in vehicles to run on coal gas or wood gas. The coal gas or wood gas is produced by a catalytic process in the vehicle, so essentially the vehicle runs on coal or wood. Admittedly, the energy content of wood is low, so wood gas isn’t really the best choice. But it could be done. It might also be possible to convert a liquid fuel burning steam engine to burn coal gas or wood gas with some sort of trailered coal/wood gas converter. Inconvenient? Yup…for now.
BTW, anyone notice the increase in gas prices now that the election is over?
Absolutely - they’re up .05 where I live.
Of course, they went down .02 and stayed there for a couple of weeks after the election. As a guy I know (who is a sucker for any conspuracy theory) says: “That just shows how clever they are! You mark my words - right after prices are lowest they always rise again.”