Tailpipe power: Researchers working to save gas by converting wasted exhaust heat into energy

It's one of those innovations that belong in the ever-expanding list of things that they should have developed decades ago and no, I don't mean just the Detroit 3 but all car companies including Toyota. Unfortunately, crisis is where real progress is made. Given the second law of thermodynamics, it wouldn't make a laptop or an automobile a perpetual motion machine but there just isn't a good reason not to do it. Heat generated and not recaptured is energy wasted.

 

The trick to recuperating "waste" heat is to do so in a cost-effective manner. This is already done at industrial sites with co-generation