It's maybe worth noting that power stations do not use giant IC engines to turn the generators. Not most of them anyway. They boil steam and feed it into steam turbines. I mean, giant IC engines exist, they power the biggest ships sailing the oceans today, but they don't use em for land-based power generation.
The development of steam engines for automobiles effectively stopped 70 years ago, in the meantime, there's been tremendous technological progress which could be adapted to the steam car, that as of yet, hasn't. For one thing, burner design is much better than it was back then. Next, we have lightweight, high-temp ceramics, which only have a limited use in IC engines, but could be used to build a complete steam engine out of, since it wouldn't have to handle the constant explosions that an IC engine deals with. Along with that the cost of aerogels has apparently come down enough to be commercially viable, which means you'd have better insulation for the boiler and steam lines (thus reducing fuel consumption). I really don't have the time to get into the nitty gritty details of all of this at the moment. However, if anyone's genuinely curious, allow me to direct your attention to this message board and this one both of them are populated by folks who in addition to knowing more about steamers than I ever will, are also engineers in some cases. A bit of a technical discussion about steamers, including the flaws of the Doble engine design can be found on this board. As for why turbines never made it into cars, according to this site, you can blame Jimmy Carter for that. (emphasis in original)
True but my point was purely theoretical in nature so its conclusion are not affected by the current advancements in engineering. However in practice a well designed steam engine could conceivably outdo a poorly designed IC but there is always that theoretical handicap which discourages engineers from pursuing it. There is a simpler reason. Turbine theoretically does not offer any performance or efficiency advantages for the operation of automobile (this goes back to the question of scale again). Also the turbine component is very expensive and more maintenance heavy than the pistons. I would love to see some sort of hybrid engine with electric motor and turbine though but it wouldn't be economical for the masses anytime soon.
I think steam will be revisted as fule prices increase. There will be a wait time until a steam car ahs warmed up and drivable is the issue, but when it saves megga bucks and with all the eltronic timers available, it will come back in fashion.
What possible advantage is there to using steam? The energy still comes from whatever you BURN to make the water HOT to begin with. I suppose we could use gasoline-powered steam engines, but we wouldn't gain anything--we'd still have the emission products of the gasoline with the additional hurdle of having to carry around water as a working fluid. We'd also have to wait for our cars to build up a head of steam before we could mode them. Bad idea all around. Daedalus12 is right on. You're going to have a tough time building a more efficient engine than one that runs on the Otto cycle.
Not all energy sources are equal though. Gasoline is useful in internal combustion engines because it is so explosive. If for some reason the only fuel you had available was something like wood then a steam engine would be more useful.
Try kerosene-ish fuels like those record-holding speed boats use (with the helicopter engines). Works shamefully well in the applications currently used, I just wonder if it could work for a car. The engine is really simple, very few moving parts, and the fuel just burns, it doesn't explode. Oh and these copters and boats have tons of horsepower. It's sorta the opposite approach of the dragster that tries to use the most violent explosions possible to speed down the strip.
Gunpowder has more energy than gasoline, yet we're not running our cars on that (or TNT which has even more energy). And despite what they showed on Mythbusters, you could make an engine run on a solid explosive, however, you'd have to completely design it from scratch, rather than doing what they did.
