It’s true, the 1958 Ford Nucleon was supposed to be a nuclear-powered car, which quite surprisingly, is just one of a handful of such designs during the 1950s and 60s. That’s right, there would have been no internal-combustion engine, but instead a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the vehicle, based on the assumption that this would one day be possible by reducing its size.
The Ford Nucleon would have been equipped with a steam engine powered by uranium fission, similar to those found in nuclear submarines. You can actually view a mock-up of the car in-person at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Nuclear technology was relatively new at the time, and it was thought that nuclear fission technology could eventually be made compact and affordable enough to become a primary energy source in the US. There would be numerous full service recharging stations nationwide and it would take around 5000-miles before the reactor would need to be exchanged for a new one.
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