The charcoal burners
Question: In the 1930s, Robert Byron wrote in The Road to Oxiana
that he had seen charcoal-powered cars being road-tested. Does anybody have any
information on charcoal as a fuel for automobiles, and were such vehicles ever
produced in any numbers?
Answer: Charcoal-powered cars were not uncommon throughout the Second World
War, when strict petrol rationing deprived most civilians of the use of their
cars.
Inside a generator attached to the back of the car, charcoal was burned in a
restricted air supply to make a product known as “producer gas”—a mixture
of carbon monoxide, nitrogen…
