Germany had running coal (and wood) cars during ww2, england even used methane bags on the roof during fuel shortages. Its not a new concept, but using powdered coal might have been.
@@nobodynoone2500 coal dust was new for automobiles, yes, but not for turbines in general. Union Pacific had a single turbine locomotive in their fleet run on coal powder. Unlike their other turbine locos, it was pretty bad.
2:20 "And since the U.S. currently has over a 600 year supply of coal..." According to the Energy Information Administration that number is currently down to ~220 years. Guess we were a little more aggressive with our coal in the last 40 years than we thought.
Probably used a statistic that just took modern electricity demands and extrapolated into the future without considering how much energy demands would increase thanks to the mass proliferation of consumer electronic devices
Even if that 350 year figure were true, that's only at current demand levels. Chinese, Indians and people in other third world nations are adopting the car based lifestyle very quickly though. But ultimately petroleum is a finite resource. That's something this 1982 video is at least willing to admit.
ChristophInns I did do some research and I managed to dig up a company was making 100 octane unleaded gasoline for piston aircraft that was based on 100% renewable biomass, and they recently went to get FAA certification, if successful, who knows, maybe this new renewable gasoline can find its way into your local gas pumps
Yeah when I was in college in the 1980s, in the economic geography class I was told we had a 30 year world supply of oil at the current usage rate. Problem with that is they keep finding more.
It does seem that way, doesn't it? It may not be the same Clorox Bleach but there seems to be at least one in the comment section of every RUclips video of a youtube channel that has 1000 or more subscribers.
@@jordanwiley4582it’s gm’s mess not Oldsmobile’s. Olds engineers and managers at the time before production told the higher-ups at GM that engine wasn’t ready, and as GM does they didn’t listen and instead fire those managers and engineers and put it out anyways.
Exceptional video! Thank You! This is nothing new. GE experimented with coal fired gas turbinse for locomotive use in the 1940's. One big drawback, was that the coal particles corrode the turbine blades. Direct dive Turbines in general are not suitable for automotive & locomotive use. A turbine by itself develops very low initial torque. Not good if you are starting a 3,000 ton train or a 4,000 lb automobile. Turbo Electric power plants utilizing very low grade fuel oil were adapted by the Union Pacific for their Electro-Turbine Locomotives which developed up to 9,000 H.P. The gas turbine spins the generator at a high RPM as the high torque electric traction motors move the train.
@@ronaldcolman6211 Yeah, but residual oils (and solid fuels) pose the problem of ash corrosion and erosion of turbine blades. Some residual oils can be treated to minimise vandidate corrosion, but the coal turbines have additional problems. Cyclone separators were placed after the combustor and before the turbine. The combustor would be either powdered coal or fluidized bed. Modern designs simply gassify the coal to make producer gas, which is then burned directly in the turbine. Some also integrate an oxygen separation unit and an oxygen-blown gassifier to eliminate nitrogen from the producer gas and raise the otherwise low enthalpy of combustion of the gas.
They did and prototypes worked. But there were several problems with it. The coal dust wears out the cylinder by friction. Also about 5 Vol% of the dust turns into ashes that needs to be removed from the inside of the cylinder with every single rotation. In the end, coal to liquid transformation is the better way.
Yeah, Fischer Tropf gasification was better technology. Solid fuel engines are really neat, but as you said, wear is a massive issue. Think the only practical use were a few very large pneumatic injection stationary power engines in the 30's, and they needed an ash system.
The German experiments with coal dust engines go back much further than WW2: When Rudolf Diesel was developing the first diesel engines, he managed to convince the German engineering company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg (MAN, which still exists today) that his engine may be able to use coal dust as fuel, in order to secure development funding from them. That particular idea didn't work, primarily because the diesel engine cycle requires injecting the fuel at the top of the compression stroke, into highly compressed air, and the quantity of fuel injected has to be precisely controlled. Which is difficult but possible for liquid fuels, but proved to be far too difficult to do with the required degree of precision for a powdered solid fuel like coal dust. They did experiment with using a mixture of coal dust and oil (at a ratio which would still be a liquid) as a way to overcome these difficulties, but the problem with that was making a stable suspension, where the coal dust component would not separate or settle out. So in the end they abandoned the idea of using coal dust as fuel, since it was just complicating the process of developing what we now call the diesel engine. However, the mineral oil we now call diesel fuel was not what was used to power the original prototype diesel engines - they actually used peanut oil for that. So the idea of using biofuels is nothing new - is at least as old as the diesel engine itself.
@@JosephChou-z7t Coal powerplant has efficiency of 43-46%. Current conventional piston engines get close to 40%. Assuming a coal turbine had only 30%, you're still better off with turbine than an electric car, as you don't lose energy on electrical network, or from batteries discharge. It is also estimated that because producing batteries takes up a lot of energy, a battery powered car needs to do over 100 thousand kimlometers to get advantage over a conventional diesel engine.
@@SparrowNoblePoland Uhh no, only the most efficient small turbo diesels are going to get anywhere near 40 and even then I doubt it... the best otto cycle car engines are in the high 20s
@@anthonybha4510 Most of the world runs on coal powerplants, and they're nowhere near switching to nuclear power or renewable sources. You Americans should finally learn that the US is only one of over 170 countries, and moreover it's a declining power. EV is a dead end. The only solution is going back to lightweight cars, putting aerodynamics over styling, and rationalisation of car use. An average European family car in the 70s, such as VW Passat B1 was lighter than current supermini/citi cars, and in the 90s cars had lower air drag than they have now. Not to mention drag created by tires. Cars like SUVs should be banned entirely. MPVs, wagons, off-road cars, they all have their important functions, but from engineering perspective SUVs are only energy wasters.
1:59 haha i was just thinking that lol! hilarious! they put all that effort into the engine and couldn't even bother to straighten the steering wheel before exhibiting the car!? im guessing that was just a regular car pulled from the assembly line to use as a test vehicle, but its just funny to see that of all the cars gm could have ended up with they got one that wasn't assembled right. makes you wonder (or kinda proves) how many cars were just slapped together and shipped out with missing and/or incorrectly installed parts lol.
+Vasek Cekan You never know, after all this was a boat car. You could translate the early works of Shakespeare into something resembling porn in the amount of time it took to turn lock to lock with GM boat car steering.
Do not forget the steam trucks and traction engines running on coal or the cars in WW2 Europe, which used generator gas suplied by either coal or wood that produces combustible gas when heated without oxygen suply (much like in the production of coke (not the white snuffable or liquid drinkable variant) in coking plants or charcoal in a similar proces) The gas was produced in a generator mounted at the rear of the car, the gas was used in the normal gasoline engine much as in a LPG car, and the leftovers from coal (coke) or wood (charcoal) could still be used in a household stove.
dieselmupke yeah I watched the video on that, it would be nice if they can bring that idea back in some kind of modern yet safe kind of configuration because the original ones had a tendency to blow up and kill people in or around the vehicle.
Metropolitan Vickers UK were working on a coal turbine locomotive back in the 50's. The two biggest drawbacks were the blades fouling with slag build up causing flame outs and the scouring of the blade edges.
Thanks for sharing this video, MotorWeek! I never knew this existed, and definitely would not have been able to see it otherwise. Coal powered car, man that's crazy! Definitely wouldn't fly today.
GM was experimenting with Steam powered chevelles w boilers in late 60's also in Emeryville CA across from the Pixar studio, they bought up a steam car company for the patents
Union Pacific RR built a coal turbine in the 1950s. The coal dust eroded the turbine blades, and the locomotive, No. 8080, was scrapped a few years later.
Thank you for sharing this video. I thought it was quite interesting and informative. I did not know this existed. More GM and Oldsmobile and Lincoln videos please.
ScarabChris it was equally ridiculous back then. Hence why GM shelved the project after 3 years. I mean this thing depended on a conveyor belt to feed the engine. Not to mention, it was a health hazard to service.
You do know some of the first cars were electric right and GM had EV's before tesla was a company right ? Tesla didn't come up with any thing new they just used what was already around and Marked the price tag up.
@@jimbotheassclown I'm hardly a Tesla fan, I think their cars have quality issues and I can't stand the cult of personality around Elon Musk. But I do think Tesla has been a very important player in the car industry. Tesla didn't invent the EV but they *did* popularize it. I can't think of a single electric vehicle before the Roadster that was available for sale, nationwide across the US. Even the 1910s electric vehicles were only really available in cities, while farmers had to go with ICE cars. And the 1990s EVs were pretty much exclusive to California and Nevada. The EV1 was only really put into place by GM because they essentially had to to comply with California emissions regulations. The second those regulations were rolled back, GM took the cars back and destroyed them. Ford did the same thing with the Think and Honda with the EV Plus. It was only in the past 10 years that GM started taking electrification seriously with things like the Chevy Bolt and GMC Hummer EV. What GM is doing now is working to make it more attainable, with cars like the Bolt and the upcoming Chevy EV crossover, while also using EVs to redefine the negative perceptions around GMC, Buick and Cadillac. Most importantly, they are preparing for an inevitable market shift towards EVs Other automakers like Ford, Nissan, Volvo, Hyundai and Volkswagen are also embracing EVs as they become more popular, and as governments set deadlines for the banning of new ICE cars. As far as I know, Toyota and Fiat-Chrysler are two of the only companies left actively resisting electrification, but those companies are known for being kind of stubborn.
Gives "Rolling Coal" a whole new meaning. I guess if they did run out of coal, they could always cook up a forest's worth of wood into charcoal as an alternative.
With the state of General Motors engines in the late 70s, early 80s (did anyone have one of those wonderful 350 diesels?) I imagine coal could've been a step up. I remember taking my 79 305 cu in Camaro back to the dealer because as a new car (1100 miles) it took 12 seconds to get to 60 pinging heavily. I demonstrated this for the service writer who laughed and said "you've go one of the better ones!". Three hours later l left the Volvo dealer in the frumpy school teacher special 240. Just for the hell of it floored it from a red light, 10 seconds! I never bought another GM vehicle. That Volvo stayed in my family for 17 years 200k miles before l lost track of it.
GM tried the same thing with a locomotive around the same time. The coal dust damaged the turbine blades too much, so they switched it to bunker oil. Two problems: 1. Because it wasn't a diesel/electric it had to have a hugely powerful hydraulic transmission which was impractical and wore out. 2. It was unbelievably loud! They only managed to sneak into service a few times before localities banned it. It was used in a few remote southwestern desert lines but wasn't deemed economical.
@@k5guy Do you honestly believe that the mass shootings, all the dead people, all the tramatized survivors and family members...... were faked?! This is why we need to censor the right wing, they're all lunatics!
Coal Dust!? How long could that engine go before a rebuild with all of that sut depositing on the blades? My guess is you'd have to blast it out with methanol every so often?...
Yea, with a turbine and jet much more air in the mix.More air means more O2 and more O2 mean much higher temps. Higher temp far less pollution. Turbines and jets tend to require far less maintenance than a piston engine. few problems when trying to put one in a car or bike. First exhaust is far hotter than a piston engine and is usually shooting straight out the back of the engine. Anyone or anything behind the car gets blasted. Next is throttle response which on a turbine and jet tend to be far slower thean a piston engine.
Chrysler also made a turbine car in the early 1960s and a few hundred models were actually loaned out to the public for testing. Jay Leno has one of the few surviving models and it still runs. Turbine engines have few moving parts so they require hardly any maintenance. A turbine engine could easily go 1,000,000 miles before breaking. It is rumored Chrysler killed the turbine car because it didn't fit there model of planned obsolescence. Chrysler and the automakers want the car last just long enough to pay off your auto loan then they want you to buy a new one. Imagine buying a car when you are teenager and the car actually outlives you. The executives knew they go most of their business from repeat customers so selling a car that never dies would soon put them out of business. The project was quietly killed as soon as they realized they couldn't fit it into planned obsolescence.
You may have a point. The car Jay has seems to run and drive fine. He made a episode on his channel on the Chrysler he has and it seems it drives fine. He drives it down the freeway at 70-75 no problem. He says it will go much faster, it idles at 22,000 rpm. Seems Chrysler solved the exhaust problem and there doesn't seem to be throttle lag. I've heard it will run on any flammable liquid, gas, diesel, alcohol. I'm sure the engine will go 100,000 before any maintenance is needed. The rest of the car, trans, brakes, diff would need maintenance before the engine. It would be interesting to see a new version with a modern engine , trans, brakes and styling. I don't know it a car like this would outlast a owner here in the northeast with road salt, but I'm sure the engine would. Here in the northeast I've seen trucks rutting out at 3 years old. Most trucks over 10 years old aren't worth buying. I've seen trucks with bodies that are fine with frames that are gone.
Now, I think we've solved the mystery of where the Spagthorpe engineers went when Spagthorpe went out of business. (Probably the 1975 instance of going-out-of-business. That would give those engineers about the right amount of time to hurry a coal-dust-powered design out the door.)
Chrysler's Turbine had a ton of research, refinements, and positive feedback and I would have figured they would have tried to continue it after they rebounded in the later '80s. Alas, they didn't which was a shame.
Only 30% of all of the USA's electricity was generated from coal-fired power plants. The share of natural gas is actually higher at 32%. Then there's nuclear energy at 20% with the remaining 18% coming from hydro-electricity and other renewables.
In Toronto where I live, half our power is Niagara Falls and the other half is a couple of Nuclear Power Plants dotted around Southern Ontario, mainly the Pickering Plant
GM pulled a fast one on MotorWeek as that was clearly coffee grounds and not coal dust they showed that powered this Olds. Just think of all the coffee grounds we throw away each year. It'd be brilliant to use them to power turbine engine vehicles! On a serious note, any idea of what happened to this prototype? An auto museum? Jay Leno's Garage? Crushed and scrapped?
The internally combustion engine has proven to be the most practical form of propeltion for vehicles , untill now when Government will force us to buy electric vehicles, America /Canada could be energy independent from the world, our Country is being taking over from within.
They did, but refused to put the required investment into Saturn to make new products. Instead their new brand based on new ideas ended up being just another GM re-badge company and folded quietly into extinction.
Okay, The turbine engine is durable and way more efficient than it's gasoline alternative. What if..................A hybrid turbine/electric hybrid? The configuration would use the electric for immediate propulsion, while the turbine blends in as a perfect high speed charger to then take over as the main source of power. As I have an engineering background on aircraft maintenance, I can see this as a very efficient system. Bottom line, the electric takes care of the initial off the line propulsion end of the deal and the turbine kicks in with very few limitations for a protectively high speed or simply Interstate cruiser. Because of the turbine part of the deal, probably a very fuel efficient type of low effort from the turbine engine to sip the fuel intake. My apologies for the elongated description, however, this is a system I would personally like to explore and test. Thank you for taking your personal time to read my vision.
Thank you for highlighting the complete ridiculousness of GM and American car companies in general. And for any who disagree....PLEASE try to defend the Cadillac Cimarron and it's blatant money-grab at senile old people who bought that piece of crap thinking it was a Cadillac.
FreeTheRocks I didn't know Ford built the Cimmiron. love how its "U.S. automakers in general" when one fucks up. But, its cool to group all automakers from one country together. that's why people have the stupid idea that Nissan's are reliable just because Hondas are. or that new Toyotas have great build quality when a Kia feels better screwed together... for the first 50k anyway.
Only one prototype was made. most cases the manufacturer destroys them after testing so they don't fall into the wrong hands. Or if it's lucky thrown into the manufacturers collection if they deem it of historical significance.
Good thing the oceans aren't actually rising at an endless rate, push some more rhetoric this is a great idea. Clean coal does exist green energy is a scam
too many variables I imagine such as high cost to manufacture, frequent service intervals, fuel logistics or even just a engineering exercise for research. Chrysler was working on a turbine car launched a pilot program in '63 for tryouts but recalled the prototypes most were destroyed however a few were spared and placed in museums. They kept working on the turbine engine right up till the bankruptcy of '79 but then dropped the program to get the government funding they needed to survive.
Hey give them props for thinking outside of the box and actually making a working prototype.
Germany had running coal (and wood) cars during ww2, england even used methane bags on the roof during fuel shortages. Its not a new concept, but using powdered coal might have been.
@@nobodynoone2500 coal dust was new for automobiles, yes, but not for turbines in general. Union Pacific had a single turbine locomotive in their fleet run on coal powder. Unlike their other turbine locos, it was pretty bad.
Nah in the 20's and 30's it was common. @@thestarlightalchemist7333
If only Jay Leno knew of this cars whereabouts today...
@jannis joplin
Which one?
@@gregorymalchuk272 the Chrysler turbine car from 1960s
@@anibalbabilonia1867 That car ran on alot of stuff including perfume and cognac
It will probably wash up there someday.
Probably took the turbine out and crushed the car..
"Let's bring us up to 12,500, come around to 270, then put it on autopilot."
"Steve....this is a car."
2:20 "And since the U.S. currently has over a 600 year supply of coal..." According to the Energy Information Administration that number is currently down to ~220 years. Guess we were a little more aggressive with our coal in the last 40 years than we thought.
Probably used a statistic that just took modern electricity demands and extrapolated into the future without considering how much energy demands would increase thanks to the mass proliferation of consumer electronic devices
Coal supplies drop when the price drops and some becomes economically nonrecoverable.
More likely the math used for the estimate changed and not the usage.
Nah we just aren’t allowed to wreak havoc while mining now so we can’t touch the other 300 years
@@davewilson7602Now That's Funny!! Sad, true, but still Funny!!!!
I hope this car still exists. It is super-cool! I'd sure love to hear that turbine engine.
If this was my car I would want coal in my stocking for Christmas
You've been a baaaaad boi
*unzips jeans*
No homo
since it was the 80's, it probably ran on cocaine as well
pancakewafflebacon coalcaine.
Probably would have been cheaper to fuel.
Max Tonight comment of the year
You win the internet today
The designers of the car sure did.
35 years later and we still use good old gasoline!
Belshizzle Bell true that.
And people will still be yelling that the ocean is going to swallow Florida any year now.
Even if that 350 year figure were true, that's only at current demand levels. Chinese, Indians and people in other third world nations are adopting the car based lifestyle very quickly though.
But ultimately petroleum is a finite resource. That's something this 1982 video is at least willing to admit.
ChristophInns I did do some research and I managed to dig up a company was making 100 octane unleaded gasoline for piston aircraft that was based on 100% renewable biomass, and they recently went to get FAA certification, if successful, who knows, maybe this new renewable gasoline can find its way into your local gas pumps
Yeah when I was in college in the 1980s, in the economic geography class I was told we had a 30 year world supply of oil at the current usage rate. Problem with that is they keep finding more.
I'm glad these retro videos are available in 1080p. It really brings the shortcomings of 1980s analog tech into sharp focus. XD
funny thing is, film scans to almost modern hd quality... its just the magnetic tape / vhs era where everything became fuzzy
4k is nauseating and pointless
Here we are 40 years later with no end of oil in sight. That and the coasts are somehow NOT underwater…
Suddenly the TDI doesn't sound so bad
Clorox Bleach dude ur eavery ware
It does seem that way, doesn't it? It may not be the same Clorox Bleach but there seems to be at least one in the comment section of every RUclips video of a youtube channel that has 1000 or more subscribers.
and they always have something funny to say
jsplicer9 exactly
No the TDI Still sounds bad!
Damn. And I thought the Oldsmobuick 350 diesel was a bad idea
bile.
dont lump buick into that mess.
@jordanwiley4582 plenty of Buicks came equipped with the Olds diesels.......
@@jordanwiley4582it’s gm’s mess not Oldsmobile’s. Olds engineers and managers at the time before production told the higher-ups at GM that engine wasn’t ready, and as GM does they didn’t listen and instead fire those managers and engineers and put it out anyways.
Exceptional video! Thank You! This is nothing new. GE experimented with coal fired gas turbinse for locomotive use in the 1940's. One big drawback, was that the coal particles corrode the turbine blades. Direct dive Turbines in general are not suitable for automotive & locomotive use. A turbine by itself develops very low initial torque. Not good if you are starting a 3,000 ton train or a 4,000 lb automobile. Turbo Electric power plants utilizing very low grade fuel oil were adapted by the Union Pacific for their Electro-Turbine Locomotives which developed up to 9,000 H.P. The gas turbine spins the generator at a high RPM as the high torque electric traction motors move the train.
Did they burn number 4, 5, or 6 fuel oil?
@@gregorymalchuk272 Turbines don't care about the grade of fuel at all. You could run one on used motor oil if you wanted.
@@ronaldcolman6211
Yeah, but residual oils (and solid fuels) pose the problem of ash corrosion and erosion of turbine blades. Some residual oils can be treated to minimise vandidate corrosion, but the coal turbines have additional problems. Cyclone separators were placed after the combustor and before the turbine. The combustor would be either powdered coal or fluidized bed. Modern designs simply gassify the coal to make producer gas, which is then burned directly in the turbine. Some also integrate an oxygen separation unit and an oxygen-blown gassifier to eliminate nitrogen from the producer gas and raise the otherwise low enthalpy of combustion of the gas.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Totally agreed, I was assuming this was a question of what it could run on, not necessarily what it should run on.
@@gregorymalchuk272 I think they used no. 5
I recall that the Germans were working on coal dust engines in WWII
They did and prototypes worked. But there were several problems with it. The coal dust wears out the cylinder by friction. Also about 5 Vol% of the dust turns into ashes that needs to be removed from the inside of the cylinder with every single rotation.
In the end, coal to liquid transformation is the better way.
Yeah, Fischer Tropf gasification was better technology. Solid fuel engines are really neat, but as you said, wear is a massive issue. Think the only practical use were a few very large pneumatic injection stationary power engines in the 30's, and they needed an ash system.
@@genori01 GM's engineering solution was to get rid of the cylinders and go with a turbine that doesn't wear out.
The German experiments with coal dust engines go back much further than WW2: When Rudolf Diesel was developing the first diesel engines, he managed to convince the German engineering company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg (MAN, which still exists today) that his engine may be able to use coal dust as fuel, in order to secure development funding from them. That particular idea didn't work, primarily because the diesel engine cycle requires injecting the fuel at the top of the compression stroke, into highly compressed air, and the quantity of fuel injected has to be precisely controlled. Which is difficult but possible for liquid fuels, but proved to be far too difficult to do with the required degree of precision for a powdered solid fuel like coal dust.
They did experiment with using a mixture of coal dust and oil (at a ratio which would still be a liquid) as a way to overcome these difficulties, but the problem with that was making a stable suspension, where the coal dust component would not separate or settle out. So in the end they abandoned the idea of using coal dust as fuel, since it was just complicating the process of developing what we now call the diesel engine. However, the mineral oil we now call diesel fuel was not what was used to power the original prototype diesel engines - they actually used peanut oil for that. So the idea of using biofuels is nothing new - is at least as old as the diesel engine itself.
Who needs a battery when you can skip the powerplant and go straight to coal
Exactly
50% of ELECTRIC cars are
COAL POWER CARS.
BUT the 100 miles or 200 miles of "extension cord" has percentage of lost power.
small scale coal engine cant be high effeciency as the power plant
@@JosephChou-z7t Coal powerplant has efficiency of 43-46%. Current conventional piston engines get close to 40%. Assuming a coal turbine had only 30%, you're still better off with turbine than an electric car, as you don't lose energy on electrical network, or from batteries discharge. It is also estimated that because producing batteries takes up a lot of energy, a battery powered car needs to do over 100 thousand kimlometers to get advantage over a conventional diesel engine.
@@SparrowNoblePoland Uhh no, only the most efficient small turbo diesels are going to get anywhere near 40 and even then I doubt it... the best otto cycle car engines are in the high 20s
@@anthonybha4510 Most of the world runs on coal powerplants, and they're nowhere near switching to nuclear power or renewable sources. You Americans should finally learn that the US is only one of over 170 countries, and moreover it's a declining power. EV is a dead end. The only solution is going back to lightweight cars, putting aerodynamics over styling, and rationalisation of car use. An average European family car in the 70s, such as VW Passat B1 was lighter than current supermini/citi cars, and in the 90s cars had lower air drag than they have now. Not to mention drag created by tires. Cars like SUVs should be banned entirely. MPVs, wagons, off-road cars, they all have their important functions, but from engineering perspective SUVs are only energy wasters.
GM engineers couldn't engineer the steering wheel to be straight
1:59 haha i was just thinking that lol! hilarious! they put all that effort into the engine and couldn't even bother to straighten the steering wheel before exhibiting the car!? im guessing that was just a regular car pulled from the assembly line to use as a test vehicle, but its just funny to see that of all the cars gm could have ended up with they got one that wasn't assembled right. makes you wonder (or kinda proves) how many cars were just slapped together and shipped out with missing and/or incorrectly installed parts lol.
Or genius, they may have been driving on a heavily crowned section of the road.
carmine440 wouldn't make your steering wheel turn that far dumbass
+Vasek Cekan You never know, after all this was a boat car. You could translate the early works of Shakespeare into something resembling porn in the amount of time it took to turn lock to lock with GM boat car steering.
They could engineer the wheel to be straight but they saved 53 cents leaving it crooked. Anything to give the CEO another bonus...
So Now i know where the term "ROLLING COAL " came from lol .
I think this might be the only appropriate vehicle to own that claim - sorry diesel-heads. :P
Do not forget the steam trucks and traction engines running on coal or the cars in WW2 Europe, which used generator gas suplied by either coal or wood that produces combustible gas when heated without oxygen suply (much like in the production of coke (not the white snuffable or liquid drinkable variant) in coking plants or charcoal in a similar proces)
The gas was produced in a generator mounted at the rear of the car, the gas was used in the normal gasoline engine much as in a LPG car, and the leftovers from coal (coke) or wood (charcoal) could still be used in a household stove.
dieselmupke yeah I watched the video on that, it would be nice if they can bring that idea back in some kind of modern yet safe kind of configuration because the original ones had a tendency to blow up and kill people in or around the vehicle.
Diesel engines were designed to run on coal dust, that's where the term comes from
I've never heard that before
Words cannot even begin to describe how much I want this amazing vehicle... 💕😉
Metropolitan Vickers UK were working on a coal turbine locomotive back in the 50's.
The two biggest drawbacks were the blades fouling with slag build up causing flame outs and the scouring of the blade edges.
Separate the ash out
Thanks for sharing this video, MotorWeek! I never knew this existed, and definitely would not have been able to see it otherwise. Coal powered car, man that's crazy! Definitely wouldn't fly today.
The editor of Car and Driver nicknamed a diesel Olds Cutlass Sierra "Old Smoky ".
GM was experimenting with Steam powered chevelles w boilers in late 60's also in Emeryville CA across from the Pixar studio, they bought up a steam car company for the patents
Union Pacific RR built a coal turbine in the 1950s. The coal dust eroded the turbine blades, and the locomotive, No. 8080, was scrapped a few years later.
Yep. While jet engines aren't very picky about what fuels they'll burn, said fuel has to at least be in either liquid or gaseous form.
"Hi man, it sounds like a 727, what do you have under the hood?"..... "Just a coal engine"
My favorite car
Thank you for sharing this video. I thought it was quite interesting and informative. I did not know this existed. More GM and Oldsmobile and Lincoln videos please.
People in the 70s: we need a more renewable fuel source
Also people in the 70s: lets use coal
Fascinating!
Leave it to GM to hold up coal as an alternative energy source LOL
This was filmed over 30 years ago....things were quite different then Einstein. You act like this was done in the last 5 years. LOL
ScarabChris it was equally ridiculous back then. Hence why GM shelved the project after 3 years. I mean this thing depended on a conveyor belt to feed the engine. Not to mention, it was a health hazard to service.
You do know some of the first cars were electric right and GM had EV's before tesla was a company right ? Tesla didn't come up with any thing new they just used what was already around and Marked the price tag up.
I mean it is still dumb to think people would want to crush coal and have to go to an aircraft tech but electric wasn't really an option then.
@@jimbotheassclown I'm hardly a Tesla fan, I think their cars have quality issues and I can't stand the cult of personality around Elon Musk. But I do think Tesla has been a very important player in the car industry. Tesla didn't invent the EV but they *did* popularize it. I can't think of a single electric vehicle before the Roadster that was available for sale, nationwide across the US. Even the 1910s electric vehicles were only really available in cities, while farmers had to go with ICE cars. And the 1990s EVs were pretty much exclusive to California and Nevada.
The EV1 was only really put into place by GM because they essentially had to to comply with California emissions regulations. The second those regulations were rolled back, GM took the cars back and destroyed them. Ford did the same thing with the Think and Honda with the EV Plus. It was only in the past 10 years that GM started taking electrification seriously with things like the Chevy Bolt and GMC Hummer EV.
What GM is doing now is working to make it more attainable, with cars like the Bolt and the upcoming Chevy EV crossover, while also using EVs to redefine the negative perceptions around GMC, Buick and Cadillac. Most importantly, they are preparing for an inevitable market shift towards EVs Other automakers like Ford, Nissan, Volvo, Hyundai and Volkswagen are also embracing EVs as they become more popular, and as governments set deadlines for the banning of new ICE cars. As far as I know, Toyota and Fiat-Chrysler are two of the only companies left actively resisting electrification, but those companies are known for being kind of stubborn.
I love how people talk about soot not realizing that the dust is really what burns the most efficiently.
True, but you would still get alot of carbon buildup. Its just a natural byproduct of this process.
I like how the tank of coal dust is right next to the hot engine lmao
Some one doesn't have a brain ...and that's you
Did you see the alignment??? LMAO, still a work in progress - great idea though... I want one!! GM should name it the Oldsmobile Kingsford.
I thought that was a punch line, "Oh the Oldsmobile, so outdated and basic it runs on coal!" BUT NOPE, IT'S REAL
Gives "Rolling Coal" a whole new meaning.
I guess if they did run out of coal, they could always cook up a forest's worth of wood into charcoal as an alternative.
Now I can burn coal without making Grandma angry!
LMAO
With the state of General Motors engines in the late 70s, early 80s (did anyone have one of those wonderful 350 diesels?) I imagine coal could've been a step up. I remember taking my 79 305 cu in Camaro back to the dealer because as a new car (1100 miles) it took 12 seconds to get to 60 pinging heavily. I demonstrated this for the service writer who laughed and said "you've go one of the better ones!". Three hours later l left the Volvo dealer in the frumpy school teacher special 240. Just for the hell of it floored it from a red light, 10 seconds! I never bought another GM vehicle. That Volvo stayed in my family for 17 years 200k miles before l lost track of it.
Union Pacific tried this very thing with one of their GTEL locos. It worked.... but not very well.
GM tried the same thing with a locomotive around the same time. The coal dust damaged the turbine blades too much, so they switched it to bunker oil. Two problems:
1. Because it wasn't a diesel/electric it had to have a hugely powerful hydraulic transmission which was impractical and wore out.
2. It was unbelievably loud! They only managed to sneak into service a few times before localities banned it.
It was used in a few remote southwestern desert lines but wasn't deemed economical.
0:11 Another day older and deeper in debt.
The year: 1982. The subject: "Oil will end soon!"
The year: 2024. The subject: "Oil will end soon!"
i wanted to hear it :(
If you add some lead it makes the engine run smoother
Don't forget to add extra sulfur to diesel too. Keeps the injectors lubricated.
Would be cool if every time you drove it a diamond was made! 😋
0:18 "Oil supplies will run out sooner or later" Yet here we are 38 years later with gas prices under $1 in places!
Laughs in august 2022
And as an Oldsmobile fan of 25 years..I would definitely drive a coal powered Oldsmobile. The end. 😂
The U.S. had a 600 year supply of coal in 1982? Now I wonder even more about why my electricity bill is so high.
John Sluder As a Jew I am offended... that I never got my cut!
@John Sluder He probably got his cut through nepotism.
Doesn't matter how much coal we have. Coal power plants are going extinct due to emissions/pollution regs.
@@kazikian Wow I wish I could take jokes like you!
@@k5guy Do you honestly believe that the mass shootings, all the dead people, all the tramatized survivors and family members...... were faked?! This is why we need to censor the right wing, they're all lunatics!
so your telling me I could have been rolling literal coal but fucking gm
Coaldust is my favorite wrestler
you will never forget the name of........ Coaldust.
Cant wait for this Oldsmobile to come to market with its coal engine.
ThunderAppeal Oldsmobile stopped production years ago!
1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale four door sedan
Pretty cool
Coal Dust!? How long could that engine go before a rebuild with all of that sut depositing on the blades? My guess is you'd have to blast it out with methanol every so often?...
About 6 months and then it needs a complete overhaul, costing a few $ thousand.
Turbine too hot for soot formation.
Yea, with a turbine and jet much more air in the mix.More air means more O2 and more O2 mean much higher temps. Higher temp far less pollution. Turbines and jets tend to require far less maintenance than a piston engine. few problems when trying to put one in a car or bike. First exhaust is far hotter than a piston engine and is usually shooting straight out the back of the engine. Anyone or anything behind the car gets blasted. Next is throttle response which on a turbine and jet tend to be far slower thean a piston engine.
Chrysler also made a turbine car in the early 1960s and a few hundred models were actually loaned out to the public for testing. Jay Leno has one of the few surviving models and it still runs. Turbine engines have few moving parts so they require hardly any maintenance. A turbine engine could easily go 1,000,000 miles before breaking. It is rumored Chrysler killed the turbine car because it didn't fit there model of planned obsolescence. Chrysler and the automakers want the car last just long enough to pay off your auto loan then they want you to buy a new one.
Imagine buying a car when you are teenager and the car actually outlives you. The executives knew they go most of their business from repeat customers so selling a car that never dies would soon put them out of business. The project was quietly killed as soon as they realized they couldn't fit it into planned obsolescence.
You may have a point. The car Jay has seems to run and drive fine. He made a episode on his channel on the Chrysler he has and it seems it drives fine. He drives it down the freeway at 70-75 no problem. He says it will go much faster, it idles at 22,000 rpm. Seems Chrysler solved the exhaust problem and there doesn't seem to be throttle lag. I've heard it will run on any flammable liquid, gas, diesel, alcohol. I'm sure the engine will go 100,000 before any maintenance is needed. The rest of the car, trans, brakes, diff would need maintenance before the engine. It would be interesting to see a new version with a modern engine , trans, brakes and styling. I don't know it a car like this would outlast a owner here in the northeast with road salt, but I'm sure the engine would. Here in the northeast I've seen trucks rutting out at 3 years old. Most trucks over 10 years old aren't worth buying. I've seen trucks with bodies that are fine with frames that are gone.
Now if we introduce bio coal of some sort we actually have a solid concept there... I was also curious to see the "refueling" process of this vehicle
You could burn wood directly. Look up turbo burn barrel.
Now, I think we've solved the mystery of where the Spagthorpe engineers went when Spagthorpe went out of business. (Probably the 1975 instance of going-out-of-business. That would give those engineers about the right amount of time to hurry a coal-dust-powered design out the door.)
Who TF came up with the description? Haha 😂
Mel Laknanurak "the COALdsmobile
Absolutely CRAZY !!
Chrysler's Turbine had a ton of research, refinements, and positive feedback and I would have figured they would have tried to continue it after they rebounded in the later '80s. Alas, they didn't which was a shame.
They couldn't get the individual engine cost down below $10k, even at mass production rates.
The carbon tax alone would cost more than the whole car. LOL
Tesla is powered by coal (electricity ) looks like we actually got a coal powered production car
@@punker4Real There are very few coal power plants that still exist, that's just plain stupid what ya said there.
Not in China.
@@johnkristof8395 Tesla is not based in China
@@DirtyDoctorDan
In the US, about 20% of our electricity is generated from coal.. 40% from Natural Gas.
No problem... I am ONLY three and a half decades fashionably late to this party. 🎉 😯
Decades before the partial coal-powered Nissan Leaf!
AZDuffman Partial coal powered? Could you please explain??
Coal is almost 50% of electricity generation in the USA. So the Nissan Leaf runs partially on coal.
AZDuffman In other words this Nissan Leaf is an electric hybrid?
The Nissan Leaf is electric, not a hybrid
Leaf is a great car I think we can all agree.
Only vehicle from that time period that i usually think of for a alternative fuel vehicle is the Jet Electrica... i have a picture of one somewhere
Like it or not...this is still a pretty unique idea for alternative fuels
What a cool idea
No different than modern electric cars which rely highly on coal-fired power plants to charge them...
you will notice a difference when you drive behind them,....
Only 30% of all of the USA's electricity was generated from coal-fired power plants. The share of natural gas is actually higher at 32%. Then there's nuclear energy at 20% with the remaining 18% coming from hydro-electricity and other renewables.
Dont assume everyone live in america
you assume the only way to make electricity is via coal. lol
In Toronto where I live, half our power is Niagara Falls and the other half is a couple of Nuclear Power Plants dotted around Southern Ontario, mainly the Pickering Plant
I had a 76 delta 88 350 rocket and 87 CS t-tops 307 Very good cars.
That car would sell well in W. Virginia!!
Man I want one of those! Put it in my 4 banger! Haha!! People would be where the hell that's coming from!!
GM pulled a fast one on MotorWeek as that was clearly coffee grounds and not coal dust they showed that powered this Olds. Just think of all the coffee grounds we throw away each year. It'd be brilliant to use them to power turbine engine vehicles! On a serious note, any idea of what happened to this prototype? An auto museum? Jay Leno's Garage? Crushed and scrapped?
Sounds like a Boeing 727? Sign me up!
I wonder what became of this prototype
Coal powered car.... damn, no wonder they needed a bailout.
And here we are in 2017 and it's not coal but electric vehicles that are coming to the forefront.
The internally combustion engine has proven to be the most practical form of propeltion for vehicles , untill now when Government will force us to buy electric vehicles, America /Canada could be energy independent from the world, our Country is being taking over from within.
So true. Ironic how once we became energy independent they pull this EV garbage.
I so wanna buy this for Gretta Thunburg 🤣
AOC needs 2
First I wonder what emissions were like second how cool it would of been if we hadn't used all the high quality coal up
I heard the next GM car will be powered by Fairy Dust.
2:30Scotty Kilmer "The Early Years"
Instead of working on coal powered car research, GM engineers should have been trying to build something that wasn't a complete piece of shit.
They did, but refused to put the required investment into Saturn to make new products. Instead their new brand based on new ideas ended up being just another GM re-badge company and folded quietly into extinction.
Wow 1977! 8yrs old...
I wanna hear all the sounds!! 🌽
Okay, The turbine engine is durable and way more efficient than it's gasoline alternative.
What if..................A hybrid turbine/electric hybrid?
The configuration would use the electric for immediate propulsion, while the turbine blends in as a perfect high speed charger to then take over as the main source of power.
As I have an engineering background on aircraft maintenance, I can see this as a very efficient system.
Bottom line, the electric takes care of the initial off the line propulsion end of the deal and the turbine kicks in with very few limitations for a protectively high speed or simply Interstate cruiser. Because of the turbine part of the deal, probably a very fuel efficient type of low effort from the turbine engine to sip the fuel intake.
My apologies for the elongated description, however, this is a system I would personally like to explore and test.
Thank you for taking your personal time to read my vision.
Thank you for highlighting the complete ridiculousness of GM and American car companies in general. And for any who disagree....PLEASE try to defend the Cadillac Cimarron and it's blatant money-grab at senile old people who bought that piece of crap thinking it was a Cadillac.
FreeTheRocks I didn't know Ford built the Cimmiron. love how its "U.S. automakers in general" when one fucks up.
But, its cool to group all automakers from one country together. that's why people have the stupid idea that Nissan's are reliable just because Hondas are. or that new Toyotas have great build quality when a Kia feels better screwed together...
for the first 50k anyway.
I personally love how Americans are SO proud of their Mexican/Canadian "American Muscle Cars"....the Challenger and Charger.
FreeTheRocks But the interior was *so luxurious!* 😄 But, really it was so soft, velvety, and quiet.
Sure then will put an EGR cooler ,maybe four of them and a DEF tank.
At the beginning, the music sounds like it's coming from my skull!
and here we are 40 years later..
This was the future they took from you
😀😀😀.... just think of all the tunning and mods us car guys would've found to do with this little beast
After all that work, they never even hit the market.
I wonder how much that would have costed to power should it have been produced
A ton of anthracite coal here in Pennsylvania is $150, so probably cheap.
How many of these were produced? It would be interesting to find one of these in the second hand car market.
Only one prototype was made. most cases the manufacturer destroys them after testing so they don't fall into the wrong hands. Or if it's lucky thrown into the manufacturers collection if they deem it of historical significance.
Some people pay a lot of money to be able to "Roll coal"
To paraphrase an old song, "I'm an Olds chunk of coal but I'll be a Diamond REO someday."
How the hell did you make the intro music sound like it was coming from behind me?
"no need for a coal shovel"- oh, thank u GM.
Keep the gas turbine engine, but dump the coal in favor of JetA,or diesel fuel.
Didn't work for Chrysler.
Basically a diesel. Sounds like a jet, and rolls coal baby
Coal dust? That probably doesn't pollute much.. #Yikes
Barack Smith did you see any soot? no? thoughtso.
start watching the video close when the car is first shown.. its clearly smoking visibly at idle
"Clean coal" doesn't exist, it is still more of a concept than reality. Coal pollutes.
READ: motherboard.vice.com/blog/fox-news-clean-coal-car-is-a-terrible-idea
Good thing the oceans aren't actually rising at an endless rate, push some more rhetoric this is a great idea. Clean coal does exist green energy is a scam
The tree huggers killed that
I wonder why this idea never really seemed to go anywhere?
too many variables I imagine such as high cost to manufacture, frequent service intervals, fuel logistics or even just a engineering exercise for research. Chrysler was working on a turbine car launched a pilot program in '63 for tryouts but recalled the prototypes most were destroyed however a few were spared and placed in museums. They kept working on the turbine engine right up till the bankruptcy of '79 but then dropped the program to get the government funding they needed to survive.
And now we have actual coal-powered cars when people charge their EV with electricity from the nearby coal power plant!