16 Tons And What Do You Get? Coal Powered Cars

Remember the gas crunch in the late 70's? Lines that would stretch sometimes for miles just waiting in line to fill up your tank. Automakers at the time were branching out with alternative ways to run a vehicle or starting to make more fuel-efficient cars. One alternative thought was to have coal-powered cars. This whole conversation came up last night with my wife. 

Evidently, this was a thing in the late 70s with not only General Motors experimenting with other ways to power a vehicle Chrysler also played around with a turbine-based engine back in the 1960s.

In a June 18, 1981 article in the Christian Science Monitor, talks about the science behind how the GM engine worked at the time.

"The finely ground fuel is stored in a tank located in the engine compartment above the right-front wheel. A metering fuel pump, aided by an engine-driven air compressor, transports the powder in a steady stream from the tank to the engine. Mechanical vibrators in the tank assure the smooth flow of powdered coal to the engine."

A quick Google search will show you that during World War II, there was a shortage of fuel, due to the war efforts, so there was another rash of cars being converted over to coal or wood-burning vehicles.

Does anyone remember the talk of a coal-burning vehicle?