How Do Cars Work

We’ll take a brief look at the car as we know it — how and why it runs, some of its wider consequences, and why there is not only a crisis going on, but also such a desperate need for an alternative — a future car.




It may be a dumb question, but how exactly do cars run today?

The odds are very good that the car you drive is powered by a gasoline engine or a diesel engine. Although these engines don’t operate in precisely the same manner, for our current purposes this is immaterial.

When you turn the car’s ignition, a blend of air and fuel meet a spark inside a closed chamber, causing combustion—a small explosion. The energy released from that explosion expands very rapidly—think of any explosion, even a huge one, and how it pushes outward. Your car’s technology is arranged to divert that expansion so that it pushes on pistons in a cylinder. This process happens again and again, allowing your car to move forward.

Because that combustion occurs in a closed space, it’s known as internal combustion; as a result, your car runs thanks to the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE).



Where exactly does the gasoline come from?

According to the Biogenic theory, millions of years ago when organic material like algae died and began to decay, it sunk into the upper crust of the earth—beginning, in essence, to fossilize. Over the next millions of years it was subjected to intense heat and pressure, experiencing a tremendous transformation in its chemistry.

Ultimately, it transformed into a gas or liquid, at which time we termed it a hydrocarbon.



What are hydrocarbons?

Hydrocarbons are organic compounds that only have carbon and hydrogen molecules. Examples of some well-known hydrocarbons are methane, propane and butane, to name just a few—which we also call fossil fuels. And it just so happens that they store a lot of energy, so when you burn them, they produce a lot too.

Therefore, in grossly oversimplified terms, we drill into the ground and find an oil well, extract these fuels, process and refine them, then send them through the appropriate infrastructure (utility, gasoline, natural gas, etc), where, in the case of cars, they emerge from pumps at gas stations.



What exactly are fossil fuels?

The US Environmental Protection Agency defines fossil fuels as “buried combustible geologic deposits of organic materials, formed from decayed plants and animals that have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas, or heavy oils by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years,” a definition which succinctly brings us to the current environmental crisis involving gasoline cars.