Nuclear Fusion Powered Cars…it will happen.

[McAndy]

swisstoni said:

Petrol? Not exactly lemonade itself.

True, but given its acceptance from a time when people had less access to information I decided to leave it out. Now that everybody is "informed", everybody is entitled!

[Roger Irrelevant]

Dr Jekyll said:

Why would we necessarily want to minimise consumption? If the energy is cheap, and you have long range there must come a point where minimising consumption is an unnecessary complication.

Anyway since fusion is proving a bit tricky, let's go straight to antimatter drives.

If you could get a fusion reactor to work in a car (and I appreciate that the 'if' is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting there), then due to the mind-boggling amounts of energy fusion releases you could have a car that you never need to refuel. A 1kg mix of 50:50 deuterium and tritium nuclei has the potential to release the same amount of energy as roughly 10 million litres of petrol. Even allowing for huge inefficiencies you could fit all the nuclear fuel a car would use in its lifetime in a coke can (one of those funny little ones you get in minibars and on planes). Ok tritium has a half-life of about 12 years so you might need to top up a thimbleful every decade, but I think even those EV drivers who see going to a petrol station as akin to the 12 Labours of Hercules could handle that.

Which means it's a shame that that'll never, ever happen.