For the heat into power, I'm pretty sure it isn't efficient enough, or enough "power" to do much (think of steam engines / boiling water efficiencies). The ultimate MPG car would be a steam engine car in my eyes burning something that is #1 renewable, and #2 cheap. After a trip, you could use a small pump to push the hot water into a pex tubing heating system for your house, and at the same time fill the car with cold water.
For the heater core idea, could make up a flap so air comes in just in front of you windshield and blows out into the engine bay/under the car instead of killing you in the car (thinking summer!), of course winter could be direct into the car
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I wonder what is more efficient... 100% grill block/areo front end, or leave a small spot for areo drag and cool the radiator, which is basically opened all the time, unless you had some motorized automatic setup.
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Originally Posted by wobombat
pmiulian, that is brilliant. I was thinking about this same idea, of having some material in the car that can store an insane amount of heat, but you took it to the next level. Now adding 100k of wax would decrease your efficiency by about 5% due to the weight, so maybe you could run some efficiency tests on the idea along with heat tests, and maybe you could attach some sort of reverse block heater that somehow takes that heat and uses it for something else, like heating your house. And what if that emergency radiator was your heater core? Just run the heat if the car is getting a bit on the hot side.
Taking this to even another level, what if your car ran off of heat? An LED light was recently made that somehow could turn some of the heat from the surrounding atmosphere into light. What if an engine could do the same: take heat from the surrounding atmosphere and turn it into mechanical energy? That would be the ultimate car.
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