It seemed like a good idea at the time: 9 car designs that went nowhere

Published

2 years ago

October 6, 2023

admin

please no — It seemed like a good idea at the time: 9 car designs that went nowhere Flying cars, amphicars, two-engined cars, steam carsnot every idea is a good one.

Larry Printz – Oct 4, 2023 11:35 am UTC EnlargeMichael Reinhard | Getty Images reader comments 139 with

Ford Motor Company had a better idea, as it once advertised, producing such iconic cars as the Mustang, Bronco, Thunderbird, and Model T. But it also built the ill-fated Edsel. Ford wasn’t alone, either; many inventors and engineers have produced cars that seemed like a good idea until they actually acted on it. Here are a few examples. 1899 Horsey Horseless

Kellogg’s cereal wasn’t the only product to emanate from Battle Creek, Michigan. The Horsey Horseless also came from there, although it’s unknown whether this vehicle was ever actually built. Still, it was a solution to a common problem in the early days of motoring, when automobiles were still uncommon and scared horses. Uriah Smith thought that sticking a horse head on the front of a horseless carriage would prevent horses from getting upset upon seeing one.

“It would have all the appearance of a horse and carriage and hence raise no fears in any skittish animal,” he wrote. “Before he could discover his error and see that he had been fooled, the strange carriage would be passed, and then it would be too late to grow frantic and fractious.”

He also recommended making the horse head hollow so it could also serve as a fuel tank. A patent drawing of the Horsey Horseless.Public Domain

It also made one hell of a hood ornament. 1902 Stanley Steamer

When the car was first invented, it was powered by gasoline. But gasoline-powered cars were noisy and smelly, and they had to be hand-cranked to be started, which frequently caused injuries or even death. Then there were electric cars, which had limited range due to their lead acid batteries. Steam was familiar, having powered American industry for the better part of the 19th century.

Cars built with steam power proved popular, but they were complex, as they had three tanks. One contained water for the boiler, another held kerosene or home heating oil to heat the water, and a third usually held gasoline to keep the pilot light burning. Finally, an acetylene torch was needed to light the pilot light. Advertisement

And you had to wait for the water to boil and create steam before you could drive anywhere. Also, these were not intuitive machines, as they had copper tubes and pipes, boilers, condensers, valves, and gauges. And if they backfired, they could seriously scald the driver. Finally, the Stanley Steamer’s water tank had to be refilled every 3050 miles (4880 km), but the company felt drivers could refill their water tanks at any brook, pond, or horse trough. Enlarge / Photograph of a Stanley Steamer, ca. 1902.Bettmann/Getty Images

Ultimately, it was the electric starter that doomed steam cars. First seen on the 1912 Cadillac Model 30, it allowed drivers to take off without waiting anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to get started. It was also far cheaper to run.

But the company survived until 1927. The last steam car was built in 1931. 1907 Carter Two-Engine

When the engine in the car that Howard O. Carter was driving developed mechanical problems many miles from home, Carter did what anybody in his situation would do in the early days of the automobile: He built his own car, albeit with a spare four-cylinder engine.

Dubbed the Carter Two Engine, it also had two radiators, two ignitions, and two exhaust systems. The engines were mounted side-by-side and were connected, according to a contemporary account in the Smithsonian Magazine, “through cone clutches in the flywheels and by Morse silent chains, to a single three-speed transmission placed in the center of the car.”

Once started, one four-cylinder engine was used until the driver needed more power. The driver then engaged the second engine’s clutch, which started the second powerplant, thereby doubling the vehicle’s horsepower to 40 ponies, allowing the car to power onward without having to downshift.

But the second engine wasn’t merely there to add power; it was also an insurance policy in case the first engine broke down.

The car was priced at $2,250, or $70,185 adjusted for inflation, and Carter trumpeted the vehicle’s introduction as “the birth of an epoch of transportation unparalleled in the history of the world.” Few customers agreed. Within a year, the company’s factory in Hyattsville, Maryland, was building a car called the Washington, which proved somewhat more successful. It lasted until 1912, albeit with one engine rather than two. Page: 1 2 3 Next → reader comments 139 with Advertisement Promoted Comments jlredford I’ve been in an Amphicar! There’s a classic car show every summer in Naples, Maine that has several of them. You can hop in and go cruising around Long Lake. The freeboard is pretty low, so you really want to do this on a calm day, and you don’t go faster than walking pace, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s more proof that fans will keep cool things working forever. October 4, 2023 at 12:36 pm IncreaseMather And you had to wait for the water to boil and create steam before you could drive anywhere. Also, these were not intuitive machines, as they had copper tubes and pipes, boilers, condensers, valves, and gauges. And if they backfired, they could seriously scald the driver. Finally, the Stanley Steamer’s water tank had to be refilled every 3050 miles (4880 km), but the company felt drivers could refill their water tanks at any brook, pond, or horse trough.So as the proud owner of 1904 and a 1912 Stanleys, I will tell you the progress in steam technology is almost as obvious as that of internal combustion engines of the same era. And in the era, you didn’t start steam cars from cold everyday, you left the pilot light burning overnight or while stopped. And you rarely blew off the boiler. Great advances were being made very year, and comparisons to a 1902 Stanley should be done with a car from 1902. If you ever want to see proof of how far ahead steam cars were then, just watch London to Brighton. Or read about how steam cars had to be banned from the Vanderbilt Cup Race.

***Edit to add: Steamers in 1902 typically did not have condensers, I am unaware of any steam car from that vintage with one.

This is somewhere between excessively harsh and just plain wrong on the Stanley Steamer.

Later steamers used oil-fired flash boilers that could produce enough steam to get moving within seconds of firing upif you ever drove a diesel car with glow plugs (back in the 80s) the experience would be not unfamiliar. (Turn key, wait for "glow plugs warming" light to go out, then hit the starter motor …)

And the steamers had a couple of huge advantages over early gas/diesel vehicles. They had no gearboxjust a simple reversermaking them mechanically simpler, and produced immense low-end torque. They eren’t slow, either, and for a number of years held the automobile land speed record. Steam persisted in heavy trucks for some time after it became unpopular for cars for precisely that reason. (As for why it went out of favour with cars: you needed to load water as well as fuel oil, and there was a secondary problem of oil leaking into the steam side of the circuit, necessitating a tear-down and deep clean of the flash boiler.)Thank you for this.
Jay Leno has a couple of videos featuring his collection of steam-powered cars like the 1922 Stanley, but also the 1925 Doble E Series. That one used superheated steam and could be warmed up enough to go in 2 minutes after starting.

While everyone likes to quote Jay Leno’s Doble’s, these were practically one off, highly engineered super cars. Very few made, even fewer used to any significant degree (do not get me wrong, marvels of engineering and very cool cars). What people should be pointing out are White steam cars with flash boilers, under ten minutes to get running and an order of magnitude more efficient than Stanley’s (they used condensers, looked like radiators, to recycle steam exhaust). October 4, 2023 at 1:25 pm Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars

Business

Nandy to sign off appointment of Kogan as top football referee

Published

48 mins ago

April 24, 2025

admin

Nandy to sign off appointment of Kogan as top football referee

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is to sign off the appointment of a chair of English football’s new referee within days.

Sky News has learnt that David Kogan, a media industry veteran who has helped negotiate a string of television rights deals across the sport in recent decades, is to be formally approved as chair of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR).

Whitehall sources said an announcement could be made by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as soon as this week, although they added that the timetable could slip by a few days.

Money latest: Octopus Energy responds after being forced to ditch advert

Once approved, Mr Kogan is expected to face a committee of MPs for a confirmation hearing early next month, the sources added.

Sky News revealed last weekend that Mr Kogan had emerged as the frontrunner for the post after an earlier shortlist of three candidates was passed over.

The new regulator has the firm backing of Sir Keir Starmer, and is a key element of legislation currently passing through Parliament.

Mr Kogan, whose boardroom roles have included a directorship at state-owned Channel 4, was initially approached during a previous recruitment process launched under the last Conservative administration.

He has some links to Labour, having in the past donated money to a number of individual parliamentary candidates, chairing LabourList, the independent news site, and writing two books about the party.

Mr Kogan has had extensive experience at the top of English football, having advised clients including the Premier League, English Football League, Scottish Premier League and UEFA on television rights contracts.

Last year, he acted as the lead negotiator for the Women’s Super League and Championship on their latest five-year broadcasting deals with Sky – the immediate parent company of Sky News – and the BBC.

His current roles include advising the chief executives of CNN, the American broadcast news network, and The New York Times Company on talks with digital platforms about the growing influence of artificial intelligence on their industries.

In recent months, Sky News has disclosed the identities of the shortlisted candidates for the role, with former Aston Villa FC and Liverpool FC chief executive Christian Purslow one of three candidates who made it to a supposedly final group of contenders.

The others were Sanjay Bhandari, who chairs the anti-racism football charity Kick It Out, and Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, who chaired the new parliamentary watchdog established after the MPs expenses scandal.

The apparent hiatus in the appointment of the IFR’s £130,000-a-year chair threatened to reignite speculation that Sir Keir was seeking to diminish its powers amid a broader clampdown on Britain’s economic watchdogs.

Both 10 Downing Street and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have sought to dismiss those suggestions, with insiders insisting that the IFR will be established largely as originally envisaged.

The creation of the IFR, which will be based in Manchester, is among the principal elements of legislation now progressing through parliament, with Royal Assent expected before the summer recess.

The Football Governance Bill has completed its journey through the House of Lords and will be introduced in the Commons shortly, according to the DCMS.

The regulator was conceived by the Tories in the wake of the furore over the failed European Super League project, but has triggered deep unrest in parts of English football.

Its creation forms part of a process that represents the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game’s history.

The establishment of the body comes with the top tier of the professional game gripped by civil war, with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City at the centre of a number of legal cases with the Premier League over its financial dealings.

The Premier League is also keen to agree a long-delayed financial redistribution deal with the EFL before the regulator is formally launched, although there has been little progress towards that in the last year.

“We do not comment on speculation,” a DCMS spokesperson said when asked about the impending announcement of Mr Kogan as the IFR chair.

“No appointment has been made and the recruitment process for [IFR] chair is ongoing.”

Environment

Everrati’s electric Porsche 911 restomod is the true soul of driving

Published

50 mins ago

April 24, 2025

admin

Everrati's electric Porsche 911 restomod is the true soul of driving

In the sportscar world, there is much discussion about retaining the “purity” of the sputtering, underperforming gas-guzzling engines of yesteryear. After a drive in Everrati’s Porsche 911 restomod, you’ll be ready to embrace the present and see just how much the drive experience can improve with modern technology.

There has been a lot of discussion about “purity” of the driving experience related to EVs. Some decry the “numb” feeling of the consumer-focused EVs they’ve driven, and think that this is indicative of some wider impossibility to provide an engaging drive experience in an electric vehicle.

But of course, when you compare a modern jellybean SUV, regardless of powertrain, with a purpose-built sportscar, there are going to be some differences in drive dynamics that aren’t flattering to the SUVs.

So lets make that comparison a little more fair. Let’s take an actual sportscar, a Porsche 911 (964) RSR, updated to the present day with an electric powertrain, and see just how much that “purity” in drive experience can be carried over with intentional effort, rather than kowtowing to perceptions of current market trends.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

For some background on myself, I started driving EVs with the original Mini E, which was merely a retrofit vehicle with the back seats replaced by a giant stack of batteries. It was a bit of a kludge, but I still fell in love with it largely due to the strengths of electric propulsion.

I then went on to buy an original Tesla Roadster, one of the few true sportscars out there that runs on electricity, so I’ve got more experience than most in small electric two-seaters.

There are certainly a lot of high-performance EVs these days, but most of them are hefty (4,000-5,000 lbs or more), 4-5 seaters with all-wheel drive (my toxic trait is that as far as I’m concerned, if it isn’t rear wheel drive, it isn’t really a sportscar).

So imagine my enthusiasm when I was offered a drive in a custom-built electric Porsche 911 (as long as Porsche refuses to make one itself…).

So, I headed down to Crystal Cove in Newport Beach, California, to meet Everrati CEO Justin Lunny and take this thing for a spin, to see what this real electric sportscar can do – and lets just say there might be a new entry on my lottery ticket shopping list.

Everrati is a UK-based company that does electric restomods of several vehicles, including the Porsche 911, Mercedes-Benz W113 Pagoda, Land Rover Series IIA and Ford GT40.

The company has completed 20 cars so far, with Porsche 911s being the most popular vehicle to convert.

I caught Lunny charging the Porsche as I pulled up, at a 50kW charging station. It has two charging inlets – one in the rear, under the trunk, which does DC or AC charging, and one in the front, using the 911’s original fuel door, which only does AC charging. The car is capable of 70kW charge rates, and while we don’t know what its charge curve looks like, that should mean 30-45 mins for a 10-80% charge.

The vehicle I drove is a 911 (964) RSR, created by Everrati as a commission, as many of its vehicles are. The vehicle still has a few finishing touches that need to be put on it, but otherwise was mostly complete. As a commission, the buyer was able to customize various aspects of the vehicle (including, for example, charge port location).

The interior of the vehicle is nicely finished, with everything redone from the original, but still in retro style. Gauges, knobs and switches are all in a similar style to the original, though a small single-DIN CarPlay headunit betrays the modernization under the hood.

It’s a two-seater, with some room behind the seats for some bags, but no seatbelts or room for people due to the rollbar. And the seats are heavily bolstered, locking you into position for when you whip it through corners. This is a real sportscar, it’s not just masquerading as one.

On a weekday on public roads, there wasn’t much opportunity to really open up the car or get in too much trouble, but the California weather and scenery were exactly what you’d expect. Our drive went up and down PCH and through some canyons, with a quick dip onto the freeway.

The amount of trouble we could get into was also limited by the car’s excellent handling. With a light weight and wide tires (295s on the rear, 30mm wider than the originals), the car felt extremely planted wherever we took it.

Everrati says that it’s important to maintain the weight of every vehicle it releases, and that it tries to ensure that its restomods don’t come out heavier than the original vehicle. It says this restomod is about 40lbs lighter than a 964 turbo (though that would make it heavier than the original RSR, which had significant weight-savings applied).

Despite the addition of a chunky 62kWh battery pack (range ~200 miles), Everrati says it was able to keep weight down by replacing several body panels with carbon fiber, in cooperation with Aria group, a contract manufacturer in Irvine, CA. Aria group works with Singer, the highly regarded Porsche restomodder – and is also helping TELO produce its tiny electric truck.

There’s no room in the trunk full of batteries… but that’s normal for a 911. A “frunk” exists, but is tiny.

Everrati even went to the effort of ensuring weight distribution is similar to the original 911.

Famously, 911s are one of few cars designed with a rear-mounted engine, whose weight hangs behind the rear axle. From an engineering perspective, this is simply the wrong way to design a car – you want to reduce the car’s moment of inertia, which means bringing any heavy components as far inboard as possible.

Everrati did bring the motor slightly inboard of where the 911’s engine is, but it’s still placed behind the rear axle, maintaining the 911’s historically weird handling. And 70% of the car’s batteries are in the rear, to keep it rear-heavy.

In our drive test, the handling certainly didn’t feel heavy and felt extremely well-balanced, so we think Everrati did a good job here.

Steering is something else that Porsche has always been praised for. Everrati tried to maintain the steering feel of the original, with only light power assist leading to a heavy steering feel.

This was welcome to me, as my Roadster has manual steering, with no power assist at all. So I’m used to having to crank a small wheel around. The steering had a little bit of “play” in the wheel, which I imagine owes to its early 90s heritage (though still much tighter than the classic Bronco restomod I just drove prior), but otherwise felt exactly how I wanted it to – a relatively quick steering ratio with plenty of feeling transmitted to the driver.

But it has also managed to roughly double the horsepower from the original Porsche it was based on. Everrati says its restomod can produce about 500 horsepower, compared to the ~300 horsepower of even the racing version of the 964 911.

How it looks from underneath – a Tesla drive unit mounted just behind the axle

As is the case with Everrati’s vehicles, its drive software was customized for the customer in question. The customer asked for a drive experience that closely mirrored the original Porsche it was based on, so it wasn’t as “punchy” as some of today’s most powerful EVs, like Tesla’s Plaid Model S or the Turbo edition of Porsche’s Taycan and Macan EVs.

I liked this, myself, as I do think that we’ve gotten a little too punchy these days and lost the linearity I appreciate out of the throttle pedals in the Roadster and original RWD Model 3.

It also had virtually no off-throttle regen, instead placing the regenerative braking on the pedal. This is a sticking point for me, as I prefer one-pedal driving with strong off-throttle regen like many longtime EV drivers who have experienced it, so I’m glad that Everrati said it could offer something like that for customers who request it.

Speaking of brakes, the brake pedal, to me, felt a little soft. This could have been due to the tuning of the regenerative braking system, and also could surely be modified to an owner’s desires. I never did any particularly hard braking events that would have needed to engage the car’s friction brakes, but I just would have liked a little touchier brake pedal.

We also had a quick stop for a shake at the nearby Crystal Cove Shake Shack, and impressed some onlookers from the surrounding all-too-wealthy area. We caught several passers-by checking the car out, and they were quite surprised to learn that the classic Porsche they were looking at (otherwise not too rare of a sight in “New Porsche Beach”…) was electric.

Overall, this restomod is better put together than any I’ve seen or felt, and drove fantastically well.

I am often disappointed in some way by the EVs that I test drive, because they’re just not as fun to drive as the EVs that I’ve spent all my time in (Mini E, Tesla Roadster and Model 3). There’s often something missing, or something different, which may or may not have a good reason for being how it is, but at the end of the day it just makes the car less appealing to me than the EVs that I really love.

Not so with the Everrati. While I’d tune a couple things differently myself, this thing felt great. Just absolutely top tier. I just had to keep interrupting myself while talking to Lunny during my test drive, telling him how great this car felt. Just fantastic.

And that leads us back to the beginning – whether an EV can offer a “pure” driving experience. While taking this thing up and down PCH, through canyons, on a perfect Southern California day, without any of the rumbling, noise, or delayed shifting of gears needed from a traditional ICE engine.

There’s nothing to get between you and driving, and all the sensory experiences that motion entails. The car did what I wanted, when I wanted, and felt and looked great doing it. That sounds like as pure a driving experience as one can find.

As for the price? Well… “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Everrati’s website doesn’t list prices, rather listing it as “POA” (price on application) and having a “let’s talk” button to reach out. The car we drove cost around $450k – on top of the donor car, which can’t have been cheap to begin with.

So, if you happen to have recently found that bitcoin drive you misplaced in 2011, now you know what to do with it.

If you’d like to read more (and see more photos) head on over and take a look at Everrati’s brand book, with lots of pretty pictures of the company’s vehicle projects.

Charge your electric vehicle at home using rooftop solar panels. Find a reliable and competitively priced solar installer near you on EnergySage, for free. They have pre-vetted installers competing for your business, ensuring high-quality solutions and 20-30% savings. It’s free, with no sales calls until you choose an installer. Compare personalized solar quotes online and receive guidance from unbiased Energy Advisers. Get started here. – ad*

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Environment

Trump aims to fight China’s control of minerals by investing in miners

Published

3 hours ago

April 24, 2025

admin

Trump aims to fight China's control of minerals by investing in miners

U.S. Department Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum looks on during CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, U.S., March 12, 2025.

Kaylee Greenlee | Reuters

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Trump administration is considering investing in companies that mine and process critical minerals in an effort to end U.S. dependence on imports from countries including China, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said this week.

“We should be taking some of our balance sheet and making investments,” Burgum said late Wednesday at a conference organized by the Hamm Institute for American Energy. “The U.S. may need to make an “equity investment in each of these companies that’s taking on China in critical minerals,” he said.

China dumps minerals on international markets, collapsing prices and making it difficult for U.S. companies to compete, Burgum said. “You’re competing against state capital because China is picking these strategically as areas that they want to invest in,” Burgum said.

The U.S. could use a vehicle like a sovereign wealth fund to invest in domestic miners focused on extracting and processing critical minerals, he said. “Why wouldn’t the wealthiest country in the world have the biggest sovereign wealth fund,” the Interior Secretary said.

Retaliatory export controls

Beijing earlier this month imposed export controls on rare earth elements — a subset of critical minerals —in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s decision to hike tariffs on goods made in China. Rare earth elements are used in key industries including defense, energy and automobiles. The U.S. imported 80% of the rare earths it used in 2024, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 70% of U.S. rare earth imports came from China in 2023.

“We have to get back in the game,” Burgum said, referring to mining. “It’s not just drill, baby, drill. It’s mine, baby, mine. If we don’t do that as a country, we will not be successful. We will literally be at the mercy of others that are controlling our supply chains.”

The Trump administration is also considering a sovereign risk insurance fund to guard companies that invest in approved projects against changing political winds in Washington, he said. If a future president cancels a project through executive fiat, companies would be paid back from the fund, Burgum said.

“Think of it like an insurance market that would be backed by the federal government,” Burgum said. “You got to write a check. There’s got to be a financial cost if you’re going to do these decisions where you’re destroying our balance sheet or destroying a company’s opportunity,” he said.

The U.S. needs to stockpile key critical minerals through a mechanism similar to the strategic petroleum reserve, Burgum said. When China dumps minerals on global markets and prices plummet, the U.S. should buy those minerals and stockpile them, he said.

“Those three things would put us in the game around critical minerals — the stockpiling, the sovereign risk insurance and the ability to take an equity position. We’re working on all three of those,” he said.