Shell Script

Dean Kamen & the Norwegian company ‘Think’ are working together on a project that sounds extremely similar to the Mr Fusion engine from Back to the Future. Over the last 10 years Kamen has spent around $40 million developing the Stirling engine, which can use virtually any fuel source to heat a sealed container containing a fixed quantity of gas - most commonly hydrogen or helium - that expands and contracts to drive a piston and produce electricity.

These engines are already being used in developing countries, but Kamen started to realise that the engines would never be economical until they were mass produced.

That’s where the Norwegian ‘Think’ car comes in. By combining the two together, you could basically use any combustible material, for example: Diesel, vegetable oil, paper, fast food, timber, cow manure etc.. to help keep the batteries charged. So instead of throwing your rubbish away, you would just use it to power your car. Not only would this extend the Thinks range by hundreds of miles, it would also turn the car into a mobile generator. When electricity demand peaks during the day, thousands of ‘Thinks’ plugged in at office parks could feed power back to the grid. If you have enough ‘Thinks’ out there you would literally change the architecture of the grid, says Kamen

At the moment the Stirling electric hybrid prototype only generates around 1Kilowatt of power unfortunately that’s nowhere near the 1.21 Gigawatts required for time travel.