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Steam cars hit the U.S. market in the 1890s but were largely extinct by the 1930s. Will technology bring them back? Credit: Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing) / Wikipedia / Public Domain Imagine going out to your garage or driveway to get into your car. But instead of keys to get it started, you’ll be using matches or a blowtorch, because your car has a pilot light. For those who owned steam-powered automobiles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this was a daily reality. Before Henry Ford’s Model T revolutionized the affordability of internal combustion engines for Americans, steam-powered vehicles...

Results of the study indicate that a steam hybrid using exhaust waste heat could reduce fuel consumption by up to 31.7%, depending upon drive cycle and vehicle. A study by researchers at Loughborough University and the University of Sussex, both in the UK, has concluded that using waste heat from light-duty vehicle engines in a steam power cycle could deliver fuel economy advantages of between 6.3% and 31.7%, depending upon drive cycle, and that high efficiencies can be achieved at practical operating pressures. The basic concept of the “steam hybrid” system is that energy is recovered from the exhaust...