No one can argue successfully that the world's vehicles should run on wood, but that doesn't mean that no one should be tooling around on timber, or that the technology isn't fascinating. Here are some interesting tidbits from an article in Low-Tech Magazine about wood-powered cars:
- Year that Sweden started "to prepare for a fast transition to wood gas cars in case of a sudden oil shortage" : 1957
- Decade when a German engineer developed a mobile wood gas generator, the Imbert generator : 1920s
- Number of wood gas vehicles in use by the end of the 1930s : around 9,000
- Number in use in Germany by the end of World War II : 500,000
- Efficiency of "Dutch John's" woodgas Volvo 240 : about one mile per pound of wood
[Source: Low-Tech Magazine via Treehugger]
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