mg -

Wind up rubber bands have to be wound up before they can unwind and do anything. In general, it requires more total work input to wind them up than they can produce in unwinding, since there's a bit of friction that gets dumped as wasted heat. So to use wind up rubber bands we need a system of "windup stations" located at approximately 2 to 5 mile intervals on every road we intend to travel where people can stop and get rewound. (Or "to get tight" as it will be known in colloquial terms)

Of course, the windup stations will need to use the cheapest fuel and the most efficient engines known, in order to do the winding, so they will consume all the petroleum fuel available in modified internal combustion engines salvaged from the vehicles we all traded in to get our new Stretch-O-Matic Super Twisters (a likely model name, for our new vehicle that features ribs in place of fins).

The re-winding stations will of course be called "Torque Stops" and will feature greasy spoon restaurants serving only the coarsest of cheap food at whatever price the market will bear, and causing *rampant obesity in all patrons thereof; which of course, by significantly increasing the average load to be carried by our wind up transports, will create a whole new industry making bigger and better wind up machines, getting everybody more and more torqued, until the whole world runs out of rubbers.

Well - - every great step forward kicks up a little dust from the road...

*Side Note: Interstate trucks are as big as they are mainly because interstate truckers eat at truck stops and **most couldn't fit into smaller cabs. (I've been told.)

**Side Side Note: The scrawny interstate drivers are the independents, who don't eat anywhere because every nickel they're paid goes back into fuel and mainenance. (I've also been told.)

Sails -- an interesting concept, but all the really constant winds blow out of Washington D.C. where there is a grand conspiracy that we all know about. This means that you could build quite efficient wind powered vehicles, but you would only be able to travel away from the source of the wind. That this might leave D.C. stranded, and everyone there might starve, might be sufficient incentive to pursue this avenue, but that particular conspiracy undoubtedly has connections with black marketeers who would smuggle anything they need in on a fleet of mopeds currently hidden in the D.O.D. secure vaults near Denver. Chances of success: Zero.

Steam is a definite possibility, and we know how to build quite efficient steam engines. The main problem is that the only efficient alternate fuel, with current knowledge, is coal. The "clinkers" that are left after burning represent a staggering landfill load, or a significant roadside waste problem if just dumped as the fuel is consumed. I have heard however that the high petro prices recently have prompted plans to reopen a number of coal mines. Perhaps big business has been secretely developing this line.

One US ***company for whom I worked for a while has been working on a hydrogen powered automobile since about 1966, using metal hydride storage. They announce, at approximately two year intervals, that they're almost ready to release prototypes for public testing but the situation remains unchanged. But any day now ...

***The hydrogen car was obviously a "pet project" of someone at high level. One of the 2d level managers at that company - obviously not the one pushing the car - was so firmly convinced that he could invent a perpetual motion machine that he'd lurk in the cafeteria waiting for an engineer to come and sit with him so he could "prove" that he'd finally done it. We engineers used to meet just outside the cafeteria to draw straws for who had to go sit with him - and explain his latest prize - so the rest of us could eat in peace. I'll grant that the guy was a world class expert on propeller design, but in 1968 he was still arguing that they should all be made out of wood.

Most of the "alternative fuel systems" mentioned in the early parts of this thread are well known, and could be built and used today. If they could compete on the basis of cost, convenience, and reliability with currently conventional engines and fuels, they would be in use. They were "desperate measures" taken in "desperate times" when better and easier methods weren't accessible. Most of those methods used an "alternate fuel" that could not be made generally available. One "chicken shit" car would require all the "fuel" from a large number of chickens to go very far. If two people in the same community wanted one, you'd have to have one helluva lot of chickens.

John