I think I am missing something, what was used to make the heat to turn water to steam?

 

Small liquid fuel burner only to heat the water boiler that propells the engine that turns the diff to spin the wheels.

 

What liquid does it burn?

 

So how long do I have to wait for the water to get hot enough for it to run?

 

Thats a lot of HP for that little car.

 

Saab was planning on phasing out all internal combustion engines by the early eighties because they believed that this technology was so refined and reliable that they could do that. So what happened??

 

Reality.

 

I agree with saabvideos, Tikka, and PaulH. There are functionality questions to be answered here that may lead to the reason it was "shelved" as you say.

 

IMO though the cost of mass producing that isn't all that cost effective and that probably led to Saab scrapping the idea. Also...how efficient was it? Could it got 500-600 miles on one "fill-up" or is it like when pure electric cars first came out the range was only like 75 miles?

 

And I bet it weighed a lot.

 

If they continued the development who knows how lighter, efficient, etc. it would go.

 

There's a reason you don't see steam powered cars on the road today.

 

Why 9 cylinders?

 

The pictures on the link remind me of this:

 

Yep, that's the technology of the future. That method eliminates the turbo altogether.

EDIT: And talk about zero emissions... If you recycle the air over and over you'd never emit any CO2! Too bad saab didn't come up with this technology.