Just Car

Just Car

From Wikipedia

Fuel and propulsion technologies

Increasing costs of oil-based fuels, tightening environmental laws and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are propelling work on alternative power systems for automobiles.

Petroleum fuels

Diesel

Diesel-engine cars have long been popular in Europe with the first models being introduced as early as 1922 by Peugeot and the first production car, Mercedes-Benz 260 D in 1936 by Mercedes-Benz. The main benefit of diesel engines is a 50% fuel burn efficiency compared with 27% in the best gasoline engines. A down-side of the Diesel engine is that better filters are required to reduce the presence in the exhaust gases of fine soot particulates called diesel particulate matter.

Gasoline

Gasoline engines have the advantage over diesel in being lighter and able to work at higher rotational speeds and they are the usual choice for fitting in high-performance sports cars. The carburetor was used on nearly all road car engines until the 1980s but it was long realized better control of the fuel/air mixture could be achieved with fuel injection. Indirect fuel injection was first used in aircraft engines from 1909, in racing car engines from the 1930s, and road cars from the late 1950s.

With a small amount of redesign, gasoline-powered vehicles can run on ethanol concentrations as high as 85%. Most gasoline-engined cars can also run on LPG with the addition of an LPG tank for fuel storage and carburetor modifications to add an LPG mixer.

Biofuels

Ethanol, other alcohol fuels (biobutanol) and biogasoline have widespread use an automotive fuel. Most alcohols have less energy per liter than gasoline and are usually blended with gasoline. Brazil's ethanol program provides about 20% of the nation's automotive fuel needs, as a result of the mandatory use of E25 blend of gasoline throughout the country, 3 million cars that operate on pure ethanol, and 6 million dual or flexible-fuel vehicles sold since 2003. That runs on any mix of ethanol and gasoline.

Electric

The first electric cars were built around 1832, well before internal combustion powered cars appeared. Thereafter-internal combustion powered cars had two critical advantages: 1) long range and 2) high specific energy (far lower weight of petrol fuel versus weight of batteries). The building of battery electric vehicles that could rival internal combustion models had to wait for the introduction of modern semiconductor controls and improved batteries. Because they can deliver a high torque at low revolutions electric cars do not require such a complex drive train and transmission as internal combustion powered cars.

Steam

Steam power, usually using an oil- or gas-heated boiler, was also in use until the 1930s but had the major disadvantage of being unable to power the car until boiler pressure was available (although the newer models could achieve this in well under a minute). It has the advantage of being able to produce very low emissions as the combustion process can be carefully controlled.

Air

A compressed air car is an alternative fuel car that uses a motor powered by compressed air. The car can be powered solely by air, or by air combined (as in a hybrid electric vehicle) with gasoline/diesel/ethanol or electric plant and regenerative braking. Instead of mixing fuel with air and burning it to drive pistons with hot expanding gases; compressed air cars use the expansion of compressed air to drive their pistons. Companies releasing this type of car include Tata Motors and Motor Development International (MDI).

Gas turbine

In spite of the power units being very compact, high fuel consumption, severe delay in throttle response, and lack of engine braking meant no cars reached production.

Rotary (Wankel) engines

Rotary Wankel engines were introduced into road cars by NSU with the Ro 80 and later were seen in the Citroën GS Birotor and several Mazda models. Rocket and jet carsA rocket car holds the record in drag racing. The ThrustSSC car using two Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans with reheat was able to exceed the speed of sound at ground level in 1997.