Will cars get back to EXTERNAL combustion engines in the future?

[Big time]

With all the pressure for renewable energy sources and traffic jams reducing speeds and power requirements
Will cars engines finally get back to external combustion?

Instead of harvesting corn to only get a small yield when converted to ethanol, or algae to biofuel maybe you can burn the entire plant?
External combustion allows to clean much lower grade fuel.
Of course the trick is to grow more plants than they harvest as not to cause desertification.

There have been huge improvements since steam power.
Now we have great synthetic working fluids, and maybe valve timing, injection and computer control can help too.

Maybe external combustion can be cleaner as it has more time to burn completely?

So, What do you say guys? Is external combustion the future?

[syncro_user]

The Stirling engine is one of the more efficient engines using external combustion. I believe someone (Honda??) built a prototype road car in the 80's possibly, and Phillips used to make gensets using the Stirling in the 50's for British army radios. There is actually a guy in the UK building an EV with an additional Stirling engine in the boot as a range-extender/source of heat for winter driving. Could work if the power requirements of the car is not too high, but they are heavy for the power they put out.

[shovel]

I'm a big fan of external combustion as it does not require a transmission of any sort (most external combustion designs can be operated in either direction and produce maximum torque at 0 rpm) and as suggested, can be fueled by anything that generates heat - the same flash boiler heated by gasoline could just as well be heated by a solar oven, electric element, kerosene, flatulence, whatever you like.

It is worth noting that if people are given a relatively fuel-agnostic car it would become possible to dispose of nearly any waste oil in your boiler, and because it would function it would be rewarding to those who do so ( save money by buying less fuel, save effort by just dumping that random oil in the burner instead of taking it to the auto parts store for recycling) - burning random junk would certainly not be a good thing for our health or that of our atmosphere.

[euromodder]

If Stirling engines can power submarines, they can power your car

[UFO]

I'm thinking NO combustion is preferable, as in ELECTRIC.