Lockeclone,If your looking to find a way to be a Torque Monster ,and still protect the plant ,that tech was developed over 100 years ago .Steam driven cars were around that produced 1000 ft/lbs of torque,set ground speed records of 127 mph and would even today pass Calif. emission standards . Check out steam autos.Doble seres E, 5000 + lbs,top speed approaching 120mph, 0-70mph in 10 sec.1500 mile range on 24 gals of water, Boiler fired on a variety of fuels (often kerosene) with avg. mileage for the day(1927).I can't even imagine what could be done with weight reduction, boiler/engine efficiency, and modern fuels ,etc.,that we have today. These autos had no clutch or gearbox and at 70 mph (@900 rpm) ran very quite.

Your comments about steam cars sent me down a research hole. Here's what I found if anyone cares:

Steam power is fairly advanced and still in wide usage, but it's a very wide category, so getting relative efficiencies for small vehicles is a shot in the dark. I read credible-sounding comments that ran the gambit, from ~10% for smaller vehicles to almost 95% for large turbine systems that use superheated steam.

I still think EVs make a lot more sense for small consumer vehicles due to the maintenance that seems to be fairly inherent in steam tech, and due to the losses incurred because of material science and mass.

Basically, the most efficient steam technology must be of a certain size, running at a certain speed, pressure and temperature to maximize your efficiencies to the point of making sense.

Think of it this way: What happens when an abnormally huge human is born (like Andre The giant)? They have health problems. Or why, the more massive an animal is, the larger their supporting bone structure has to be?

Follow me here, because this gets even drier but it's cool stuff:  When you increase the size of something in 3 dimensions, the surface area increases to the power of 2 and the mass increases to the power of 3. Heat loss from a steam system is happening on the surface areas while energy storage is happening in three dimensions. Therefore, a more massive system stores energy more efficiently, and minimizing heat loss is the name of the game with steam systems.

More pressure and more heat are also better at transferring efficient steam energy. because the hotter the steam is, the larger its volume. You can probably see where I'm going here. You can only get so large and so hot/pressurized before you start butting up against the limits of material science. You also carbonize most oils long before steam reaches it's optimal conditions. A car without it's lubricants = no bueno.

Then, to add on top of all this, steam is external combustion meaning you put energy into liquid to be used on-demand later. To get that "battery" to its optimal parameters, it either takes time, or you use less efficient methods like flash boiling to get the job done. If we're going to beat the efficiency of IC engines, we really can't be flash boiling, so that leaves a more storage-oriented boiler with a secondary chamber to massively heat up the steam right before it's used and a system like that is quite efficient, but it's large and is only efficient when used for long hauls.

So, my conclusion, after knowing next-to-nothing and having spent a little while on google: is that modern steam actually could be a pretty viable, efficient mode of transportation for large vehicles like semi trucks or ships who will maximize the efficiency of their systems by being large and running their external combustion chambers for a very long time. It's also conceivable that these fleets would be well-maintained and looked after negating the extra maintenance that steam engines require.

I'm not a convert, by any means. I don't see these techs, even developed much further as better than EV is already proving to be, but I know people who have had to deal with a fleet of natural gas trucks that can barely reach highway speeds and break down virtually all the time. Show me a hill that a steam piston or electric motor can't push a vehicle up and I'll go get my climbing gear because it's probably a cliff.

I briefly covered efficiency problems with flash boiling in my post, though I couldn't find hard numbers on the exact loss.

So we're less efficient than EV, nobody is making or developing them currently, you're still burning fossil fuel, and maintainance is much more costly/intensive.

I'm not against it. Go build it and prove me wrong! But EV has already proven itself and continues to improve greatly every year.

Roatery and semi-turbine tech is very cool too. Many companies have made several promising designs on paper and even some moving prototypes... But they can't seem to get them to market... Steam seems to be the same way. Prove me wrong, but until then IC is King and EV is the young prince and unless another claimant comes forward with some serious evidence that they're better (of which there isn't) those techs are SOL.