That's the World Thorium Fuel concept car by Cadillac. The Cadillac WTF (yes, I know), designed by Loren Kulesus, is supposed to be powered by the nuclear fuel thorium and therefore last 100 years (Whaaa? Nuclear fuel in a car? What a great idea!):
Elsewhere, every major system is redundant in case of a failure. And the wheels don't have individual tires - in fact, what's located at each corner is one combined unit made up of six individual wheels. That gives you 24 wheels in total, and each wheel has its own induction motor. Said Kulesus, "The vehicle would require the tires to be adjusted every five years, but no material would need to be added or subtracted."
Link | Loren's portfolio at Coroflot - via TechEBlog
Previously on Neatorama: Curly Skateboard by Loren Kulesus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
Personally I think it is a great idea. The containers they can put the fuel source in can be practically impenetrable, just like the containers they move power waste in.
Great idea. Maybe for the moon or mars, but not earth.
those wheels look like rocks and sticks and other things would get stuck in them.
Again, should GM really be wasting time on this instead of a viable business plan? TARP money won't last forever...
Unfortunately we'd rather spend our time figuring out new ways of killing each other in an effort to clutch to our century old infernal combustion technology which causes more problems on this earth that it seems to solve.
And for those who said that storing radioactive material is too dangerous, youtube "nuclear waste container tests." They ram rocket powered trains into nuclear waste containers to see if they can break them or cause a hazard.
Anyway, the problems with the technology are small compared to the benefits. If we spent half our defense budget on technology we wouldn't NEED a defense budget.
i think scientist could still use thorium as a more stable fuel for nuclear reactors.
from (wikipedia.org/thorium/)
"Thorium as a nuclear fuel
Main article: Thorium fuel cycle
Thorium, as well as uranium and plutonium, can be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Although not fissile itself, 232Th will absorb slow neutrons to produce 233U, which is fissile. Hence, like 238U, it is fertile. Theoretically thorium is more suitable fuel source than uranium: thorium is about 550 times more abundant in nature than uranium-235, potentially all of thorium fuel can be usefully burned in nuclear fission (current state of the art uranium based reactors burn only about 1-2% of fuel), thorium is fairly evenly spread around Earth with a lot of countries having huge supplies of it, thorium fuel cycle creates mainly Uranium-233 contaminated with Uranium-232 which makes it ill suited to weapons proliferation.
Problems include the high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of 233U which is a result of its contamination with traces of the short-lived 232U; the similar problems in recycling thorium due to highly radioactive 228Th; some weapons proliferation risk of 233U; and the technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing. Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available.
Nevertheless, the thorium fuel cycle, with its potential for breeding fuel without fast neutron reactors, holds considerable potential long-term benefits. Thorium is significantly more abundant than uranium, and is a key factor in sustainable nuclear energy. ^^Perhaps more importantly, thorium produces several orders of magnitude less long-lived radioactive waste.^^...."
anyways, governments will miss a lot of money if this hits the market, so they wont allow it.
\no trips to the gas station, no batteries to replace, no greenhouse gas emissions.
The stationary plants can be used to safely consume our current stockpile of nuclear waste.
lets work out the bugs on this.....