February 7, 2026
Logs vs. Li‑Ion
Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank (2010)
Cars That Ran on Firewood? Internet sparks smoky debate
TLDR: During WWII, over a million vehicles ran on wood gas; interest quietly persists today. Commenters clash over practicality—some fret about 10‑minute smoky warm-ups, others say battery electric cars already won—while a few pitch farm tractors and marvel that this wasn’t an AI prank.
WWII-era “woodmobiles” are back in the spotlight thanks to Low Tech Magazine, and the comments lit up like a campfire. Some readers were stunned that over a million vehicles once ran on wood gas. Others went straight to the practical drama: duxup couldn’t unsee the “10-minute warm‑up” and imagined a parking garage turned smoke sauna. The vibe: wood-powered cars sound cool… until you’re late for work and the car needs a bonfire.
Then came the EV vs. apocalypse tech showdown. perilunar dropped the big reality check: battery electric vehicles (BEVs, meaning plug-in cars) are already replacing gas cars, so the “end of cheap oil = end of cars” prediction aged like old charcoal. On the flip side, pjfin123 asked the farmer’s question: if not for daily commuting, would a wood-powered tractor make more sense? Meanwhile, rippeltippel confessed they thought the whole article was an AI-generated prank—before falling down the 1800s gasification rabbit hole and calling Hacker News “a great place.” For flavor, kev009 brought TV lore: IBM engineer John Cohn built one on The Colony—yes, reality show meets reality fuel—and it actually worked (clip).
Bottom line: a nostalgic, scrappy tech that screams resilience—sparking laughs, skepticism, and a surprisingly wholesome curiosity about putting literal firewood in your fuel tank.
Key Points
- •Wood gasification produces a combustible gas from organic material at ~1,400 °C and was used as early as the 1870s.
- •Georges Imbert developed a mobile wood gas generator in the 1920s; mass production began in 1931.
- •By the late 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles operated in Europe; WWII rationing drove widespread adoption.
- •Germany had ~500,000 producer gas vehicles by the end of WWII; a 3,000-station network supplied firewood.
- •Worldwide WWII usage exceeded one million vehicles, with significant numbers in Sweden, France, Finland, and Australia; the technology declined after gasoline returned.