On Dec 19, 8:01 am, B A R R Y wrote:

[snipped insightful writing for the sake of brevity]

My apologies for the looooooong post!

What a lot of people don't get, is that there are direct conversion
formulae.
1 Gallon of fuel contains a finite amount of energy. Period.
If that is used to move a Humvee from the stoplights to the next time
the brakes are applied and overcoming rolling resistance, wind
resistance and friction in the the time we get to the next
stoplight...etc.
If, for argument sake, it needs all the energy from a gallon of fuel
to accomplish this task, a 80mpg carburator or a 1000mpg carburator
aren't going to make one bit of difference.

It requires a certain amount of fuel to do a certain amount of work in
a certain amount of time. And it does not make a difference if you
squeeze the fuel through a generator and a set of batteries or create
steam first.
X amount of fuel = X amount of work. Now, there are stupid ways to DO
the work, such as heating up all the air around you in the process of
doing the work, or dragging a parachute behind your plane fro no
reason...but you will NOT get more from your gallon than what
ultimately is stored in that gallon.

I say, hook everything up to a perpetual motion machine.