JIM5.0

I am writing this as a separate reply too since this is also beside the point.
None the less, this sort of thing highly interests me just as much as it interests you.

Discussing this, and please don't take this the wrong way, I'm just analyzing and dissecting each point from a Devil's Advocate point of view (a critical point of view for the sake of discussion).

I understand that there are many more examples than the Stirling engine and electrolysis motors/engines below, but I will discuss your two examples from a critical point of view.

The bottom of the line for each one is: Nobody is investing to bring these or any other kind of water engines to mass production because current technology is still too far off to making it happen.
And investing money and effort to bring one of these closer would be extremely cost prohibitive (i.e. nobody has the money, hundreds of billions, to bring such concepts into usable mass production automotive innovations).

Not getting on you, just pointing out a correction: it's Stirling with an "i."

I know little about this kind of Stirling engine, but seeing these simple heat engines as toys fascinated me since I was a child.

As for automotive use, I cannot see them as practical at all. Would they be capable of producing at least 100ft-lbf of torque to produce a practical vehicle? The radio emitters: just how much power would they need to put in enough heat into the salt water to produce enough usable power?

I remember simple Stirling engines as fascinating toys, but they were only novelties still needing some sort of temperature difference source.
I remember one of my physics professor demonstrated a Stirling engine using dry ice to cause enough temperature difference to make his sterling engine work for our class.

The question is how far are we with current technologies to reaching the goal of making a successfully practical Stirling engine for automotive use?
If today's technologies are too far off from that goal, no car companies, not even Tesla, would spend the massive amounts of money or invest the massive amounts of effort to R&D this.

This too is a long way off from being practical. As a matter of fact, this kind of idea was toyed around in various forms.
This is just one example of a water engine; see this link.

http://news.yourolivebranch.org/2011...iled-in-japan/

Hydrogen harvested from water is combined with Oxygen from the air and the chemical reaction of H2 plus 2O2 molecules turning into water produced electricity to power a drive motor or traction motors at the wheels to propel the car.

Honda has a proven functional prototype but the problem is the infrastructure does not exist (hydrogen stations as part of gas stations, hydrogen distribution points, tanker trucks capable of bringing hydrogen to the pump) and also the stigma of pressurized hydrogen catastrophically exploding, either in the pressure tank if your car or the whole gas station going up in a mushroom cloud.

Also, the cost of extracting Hydrogen molecules from water is currently too expensive. Again, just like the Stirling engine above, the technology is too far off to make it practical for cars right now.
No car company is willing to spend the hundreds of billions to research this; it's just too far off and too expensive to do.

No disagreement here. One of the first production vehicles was Cugnut's transporter; Cugnot made this vehicle beginning around the same year Napoleon Bonaparte was born and 1771.
It was a steam vehicle that weighed only a few hundred lbf more than a Dodge Challenger, LOL

Being steam, it was of course a combination of two things to ultimately power the car: Coal to provide the heat, and then water to take that heat so it can vaporize into steam, which in turn is used to create mechanical power.

Later, steam engines advanced and discarded coal burning for oil burning as a heat source.

Petrol/electric existed in the 1930's as Diesel-electric trains. They eventually completely replaced steam locomotives by the 1950's.

Hybrids are kind of akin to diesel electric trains except that they are gas-electric, and the gas engine can actually assist the drive motor to propel the car.
Even in modern diesel-electric locomotives, the diesel engine has absolutely no mechanical coupling to the traction wheels; it only exists to turn powerful alternators which in turn sends electricity to the traction motors to turn the wheels.

Cruzinaround

Often Divisions don't even need to be announced. They can be internalized and go dark to the public. But the purpose is to focus the efforts within that division to initiatives that are within the realm of ... science fiction ... and to make it all possible. If it can be imagined then their quest is to make it reality. Innovations spring from this.

Focused Divisions can also be the front for launching into innovative concepts without the risk of placing existing divisions in the face of ridicule. This would apply where transparency is practiced. It allows for the ability to place the risk in a Division that's sole purpose is to dare to be different, take the risks of challenging the impossible and in the end bringing them into Market successfully. This of course means... rolling a budget in play to fund it. All Corporations have a fund for R&D or they allocate a portion of CApEx towards "other".

Green minded people are not that impressed with the VOLT. They just respect what it represents. There are other better executed platforms that obviously have more interest from green minded people.

Jz....It was from Elon Musk's own words that sharing the knowledge behind his patents would be made available. Don't question me... question the man himself this is how he presented it when he addressed the public openly. And having met the man and listened to what was just on his mind... there's more to come from silicon valley. Still its not like he's producing things that can't be reverse engineered to begin with nor would he be upset if anyone did. The knowledge is of course the how and the why behind the final outcome. With the objective of carrying the world into the future...BESIDES...competition can often benefit from a certain level of collusion. To ASSume that collusion does not happen between companies, even companies where there is apparent extreme rivalries would be naive. Case in point ... those magnetic shocks on caddies and now in top tier ZL1's didn't come from GM's innovative thinking. <wink> And suddenly Ferrari is now Westernizing their philosophies into producing more attainable vehicles and SUVS and Saloons<wink>


Again I'm not a Marketing man, most of those guys go broke after milking their one trick ponies dry. I work in the Innovations sector. Where patents and trademarks are only a small part of the final product brought to market. So in terms of what works and what can be transferred to any form of business. I've seen it. Witnessed it.... and the people who embrace it... are wealthy because of it.

BoOm
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Cruzinaround

Wow you've got a boner for going on about a concept. Here's naive for you... don't Assume this won't go anywhere. That was the same thinking about an electric car... that it would not progress beyond toys. And look where we are now. If you spend all your time saying it ain't ever going to happen...guess what... it will. Part of innovation isn't sitting here in the now and telling everyone the reasons why it won't work. Its all about projecting the outcomes for the future by figuring out how to make it work. That's the thought process behind how Henry Ford developed mass production assembly lines and why we're all here now discussing FoMoCo.

I think at this point unless you want to go off and build a water combustion engine just to say wow or yeah it does work or it would take this to make it a reality for propulsion in a full sized vehicle... Which is really not necessary. Somehow I feel you would build one. Then just accepting it as an example of a possibility is all that is required for an innovative seed. Where things advance from where we're at now... is not in our hands. I'm sure that was said at some point when people were tinkering with electric toy cars and wondering about torque and power output vs distance projections to make it into a full sized reality. In the end they worked it all out.

In fact It's also how the combustion engine was thought of in the beginning, yet look at where the outcomes have landed us in our present day.

Sometimes that idea is requisite for a projection for a distant reality.... the journey to get there is the challenge. Outcomes my friend are all that matter. The Journey to get from point "a" to the desired outcome as you've thus proven is often forgotten. Focus on the outcomes.

Just Saying
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JimC

Okay, this has strayed way off and I don't have the time right now to clean it up. Going to lock it until later

pascal

Agreed Jim.
Felt like doing so earlier but I didn't want to be the Forum's Gestapo. lol