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the excelleration was tremendous and that it was quiet and comfortable. Makes me wonder why steam has not been used or developed further since that time. I never hear of anyone useing heat and water as an alternitive.

Watching Jay Leno drive his c. 1910 Stanley shows just how fast these things are (acceleration-wise). Steam is incredible; if a tiny box on the front of a giant steamer locomotive and 200-car long train can propel that entire train at even 55 mph for hours, you know steam is incredibly powerful.

However, there were/are problems implementing it on a small scale. Even the best flash-point steamers like Doble - the last to die out - had trouble especially with STEAM-UP TIME. You have to wait a significant amount of time to get going - just like electrics. This is the same for locomotives (which had different mechanisms for heating, of course) - they take a long time to "warm up". It's also why they would absolutely continue running between reasonably spaced jobs - turning it down and up again would waste alot of fuel and time.

Steam is a great idea - better than electric, in general, I think - but someone has to come up with a way to warm it up "instantly" and efficiently (you need something to make steam - fuel or electric), primarily.

Something that nobody's mentioned up to this point: You have to carry at least twice as much water as you do fuel in order not to run out of water.

Steam is a great idea - better than electric, in general, I think - but someone has to come up with a way to warm it up "instantly" and efficiently (you need something to make steam - fuel or electric), primarily. I have worked at a small company that uses a steam process in heat treating parts, they have a small steam boiler about 2'long and a foot in diameter,it weighs about 100 lbs, it takes less than 5 minutes to go from cold to producing steam , it uses an electric coil to make the steam. I don't know why a steam hybrid could not be made using a electric or gas powered engine for starting quickly and then have steam power take over. Seems to me that if we did not have cheap gasoline we would be driving some sort of Steam powered vehicle by now.