BMW Nearly Built A Steam-Powered Car In The Mid-2000s

Most of you may already know, but steam power was one of the earliest forms of locomotion. Crude, heat-powered engines were first described as far back as 30 BC with the aeolipile, or “Hero’s Engine”, created in Ancient Greece and served as a rudimentary radial engine. After well over a thousand years, humans rediscovered steam power, and it was widely utilized in agriculture, as well as water and rail travel during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

BMW

BMW is a German luxury car and motorbike manufacturer and current owner of Mini, Rolls-Royce, and Alpina. With roots dating back to 1913 as Rapp Motorenwerke, it officially became Bayerische Motoren Werke in 1922 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines. BMW’s first car was built in 1928 when it built the Austin 7 under license from Dixi, which was called the BMW 3/15. BMW grew into a manufacturer of premium and luxury automobiles, launching iconic nameplates like the 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series, and is today known as one of the leading luxury automakers in the world, while the BMW M division is hailed as a leading manufacturer of performance cars.

Founded

1916

Founder

Karl Rapp

Headquarters

Munich, Germany

Owned By

Publicly Traded

Current CEO

Oliver Zipse

While there were several early attempts at a steam-powered automobile, none of these were widely successful. By the turn of the 20th century, nearly all attempts at a steam-powered car were abandoned in favor of fuel-oil-powered vehicles. Thus ended the near-fruitless drive to create a heat-engine-driven car. That is, until BMW resurrected the idea nearly a century later for use in their proposed Turbosteamer, a concept dating back to 2005. Does that mean we’ll see a steam-powered 5 Series soon? Read on.

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Potential BMW Steam Power In The 21st Century

BMW’s “Turbosteamer” Project Quick Facts

• Project commenced in 2005
• Meant to be a sort of hybrid drive tethered to a small gasoline engine
• Projected to help boost engine efficiency by up to 15 percent
• Utilized exhaust gas heat to drive the steam-powered generator

Twenty years ago, BMW was searching for the next big thing in the automotive industry. At that time, the shift towards more efficient and eco-friendly motoring was just beginning, and cars such as the Toyota Prius were exploding in popularity due to their environmental friendliness and gas-saving abilities. In an attempt to take things a step further, BMW took several steps backward, back to the time of steam power. A test rig was created by BMW and testing was, reportedly, underway quite quickly following the announcement of the program.

Why Did BMW Choose Steam Power?

BMW’s main goal with the Turbosteamer was to prove to the world that the future did, in fact, have a place in it for the regular-old, gas-powered internal combustion engine, just not in its conventional form. Initially, BMW had planned to be able to mass-produce vehicles equipped with the Turbosteamer’s powertrain within ten years of the project’s start date. Of course, that never happened.

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It sounds silly, a steam-powered Bimmer in the 21st century, but the Turbosteamer wasn’t some sort of steam train ripoff, and it didn’t use a coal-fired furnace to heat a giant water tank. It was actually much more sophisticated than that. In essence, the “steam engine” part of the Turbosteamer was meant to utilize heat from the car’s exhaust system in such a way that roughly 80 percent of exhaust gas was recycled.

This meant the environmentalists would be happy, and fans of the internal combustion engine wouldn’t have to go without one. In reality, if the idea ended up working, BMW was staring down the barrel of getting two birds with one stone.

How The System Worked

As we touched on above, one of the hallmarks of the Turbosteamer’s operation was its ability to recycle most of the exhaust gases produced by its accompanying internal combustion engine. Those exhaust gases would be routed into an expansion unit, or tank, which was connected to the ICE motor’s crankshaft and held an undisclosed amount of ethanol. The rest of the car’s exhaust heat that wasn’t absorbed by the expansion tank configuration was routed into a cooling mechanism, where it would be converted into more usable energy for the steam-powered system.

According to BMW’s initial reports, the Turbosteamer configuration would employ the use of a 1.8-liter inline four-cylinder engine. BMW’s speculative math showed an increase in up to 10 extra kilowatts of power, or about 13 horsepower, being made, along with an extra 15 lb-ft of torque. These power gains came with a projected 15 percent reduction in fuel usage when compared to the 1.8-liter’s typical operating efficiencies.

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On top of this, and unlike conventional hybrids, the Turbosteamer could, reportedly, see a steady increase in efficiency as the vehicle’s speed increases and is maintained at a steady rate. For example, highway driving would achieve a larger improvement in mileage than city driving, whereas most hybrids see worse mileage on the highway when compared to city driving.

Why Didn’t The Turbosteamer Go Into Production?

The Turbosteamer system was complex. Like we said before, it wasn’t just some sort of steam train mimicry, it was an entirely new design that rode the very edge of what was possible at the time of its development. Complexity usually means expensive, especially for would-be consumers who would need to repair it at some point in its life. Not to mention the added cost to the vehicle’s starting price.

While a steam-powered hybrid may sound simple on the surface, it proved to be fantastically expensive for BMW. Because the Turbosteamer project wasn’t meant to be applied to a sports car, race car, or supercar at first, BMW didn’t see a way to profit from this endeavor without first incurring large losses, only for potential sales volume to make up for them. Offering a new product is always risky in the business world, but BMW seemed to have figured that risk to be too great, and the project was halted indefinitely.

Sources: BMW