How is this the first time me (or anyone else in this comment section) is hearing about this? It seems like a pretty major deal.
>even a modern woodmobile requires up to 10 minutes to get up to working temperature
That was my first question, and I can't imagine it would be great to have a parking garage of these things warming up / outputting gasses for 10 min each.
It's nowhere near as convenient as gasoline--there's plenty of minding and care required--but during hard times it's much more efficient and convenient than hauling a truck load of stuff by horseback, or walking. A wood gas spark engine runs much more efficiently than an equivalent steam engine, for example.
The difference back then is everything was carbureted and switching over to wood gas was relatively simple. With today's extremely complex fuel injected vehicles it will be a whole different story.
Converting the wood to charcoal before use has been found to be the most reliable method of burning wood by most users, with lowest contamination/fouling risk, although the owner of the http://www.driveonwood.com forum (a guy from Springville, Alabama) runs his truck on straight hardwood and has put many miles on it like that.
When in good tune, a full size pickup truck will go about a mile per pound of wood.
I think the years since this was written has shown this to be false. BEVs are steadily replacing ICE vehicles and we have more cars than ever.
The answer is fewer cars and more shared transportation. People always mention lack of public transport possibilities, affordability and rentability but the offer would develop immediately and would be much more efficient than what we have now if private passenger motorized vehicles weren't allowed as it would reduce the overall traffic significantly if only emergency, public and good transports were allowed.
I live in Norway and for most people, EVs are an improvement during cold weather in my opinion. They get warm inside much faster, drive better, and while the range is obviously a lot lower, it isn’t a deal breaker if you buy a good EV.
EV wouldn’t represent 97% of new car sales in Norway if they were worse in the cold IMHO. The country put incentives but they are phased out and many people don’t mind paying a lot.
Yeas sure there are use cases where gasoline is more convenient than BEV. But just because the usecase is relevant for you doesn't mean it's globally relevant in the big picture.
Also how much people are ready take inconvenience depends how much they have to pay for the luxury of using gas. Even ignoring the global warming aspect, the EROI of oil drilling is plummeting. We'll never run out oil, it will just get more and more expensive as the easy sources of oil are all used...
Just look at what Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N... has done in just 20 years and let's just say it's not known for its warm climate.
It's something that doesn't matter most of the time and when it does matter you use something else. LED traffic lights started getting built with heaters in them.
http://wiki.gekgasifier.com/w/page/6123718/FrontPage
Be warned, there are a myriad of reasons this technology never became commercially successful for modern applications.
Historically, they weren't that common, as large-scale use of wood gas was mostly a thing in Europe during WWII, and during that period continental European agriculture was still mostly horse-driven. After WWII when agricultural mechanization really picked up, fuel was again available so there was no big motivation to put up with the disadvantages of wood gasifiers.
A tractor can certainly work well on wood gas.
Jeff Lane has a few of these in the Lane motor museum in Nashville. Just about everything in the museum is in operating condition and he likes to show his collection off on weekend demo days, but I haven’t had a chance to see these run. Great car museum, all oddball cars, nothing normal. They recently finished building an accurate reproduction of the Fuller Dymaxion. https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/dymaxio...