I doubt if, even at 100% thermodynamic efficiency, the energy content
would be sufficient.
What say you?
OIL INDUSTRY SUPPRESSED PLANS FOR 200-MPG CAR By
SIMON DE BRUXELLES, TIMES, UK - The original blueprints for a device
that could have revolutionized the motor car have been discovered in the
secret compartment of a tool box. A carburetor that would allow a car to
travel 200 miles on a gallon of fuel caused oil stocks to crash when it
was announced by its Canadian inventor Charles Nelson Pogue in the
1930s. But the carburetor was never produced and, mysteriously, Pogue
went overnight from impoverished inventor to the manager of a successful
factory making oil filters for the motor industry. Ever since, suspicion
has lingered that oil companies and car manufacturers colluded to bury
Pogue's invention.
Now a retired Cornish mechanic has enlisted the help of the University
of Plymouth to rebuild Pogue's revolutionary carburetor, known as the
Winnipeg, from blueprints he found hidden beneath a sheet of plywood in
the box. The controversial plans once caused panic among oil companies
and rocked the Toronto Stock Exchange when tests carried out on the
carburetor in the 1930s proved that it worked.
Patrick Davies, 72, from St Austell, had owned the tool box for 40 years
but only recently decided to clean it out. As well as drawings of the
carburetor, the envelope contained two pages of plans, three test
reports and six pages of notes written by Pogue. . .
The announcement of Pogue's invention caused enormous excitement in the
American motor industry in 1933, when he drove 200 miles on one gallon
of fuel in a Ford V8. However, the Winnipeg was never manufactured
commercially and after 1936 it disappeared altogether amid allegations
of a political cover-up.