reinventing the steamengine?

Question

I wonder, if with today's tecgnology, it is possible to bring back the steam engine, use solar panels to fuel it, and a battery to get it started in the morning.
It seems to me that this is not an impossible task, solar panels can easely be incorperated in a car's roof or hood, and if they can make a solar powered calculator, they can surely make solarpanels that work even if there is only daylight, and batteries could take care of nighttime driving,if this is possible it would get us away from oil for sure.

Answer 1

As the others said, it's all about how much you get out of the system compared to what you put into it. You can't get alot of power from solar panels, otherwise it would be more efficiant to make solar cars. And those don't have the power to go fast.

However, steam power is very important and you should research it carefully. Why? Because if there were ever a major disaster that throws the world into anarchy, steam is your best and easiest way to restart. A major disaster would almost certainly knock out electronics, rendering all modern vehicles useless. In order to have something close to what we are used to without a whole lot of other knowledge, steam power is your best bet.

Answer 2

Like the guy above me stated, thermodynamic efficiency is what we're trying to get past in steam engines. It's not the coal or all that, because they've already made steam engines without coal. They are just not efficient. They're like diesel engines in terms of speed. They have higher power but only at a low RPM range. So putting them in fast cars will never happen.

Answer 3

If you could get enough electric power form solar panels, why not drive electric motors directly and skip the steam engine?

Answer 4

you really need to learn some engineering first. search on steam engines and efficiency, and a term called "thermodynamic availability".