I went to graduate school with the idea of getting into alternate fuel technology. What I found out was that there was never an energy shortage, or even a fuel shortage. There were distribution shortages and problems caused by government regulations. One of the "big bad oil companies," Texaco, invented an engine called the Texaco Controlled Combustion System that could run efficiently on low octane fuel in automobiles because raising the octane level without using tetraethyl lead was very energy intensive and they could be more profitable by selling low octane (70) gas straight off of the fractionating column. This was before gasahol. Nobody was interested except UPS which bought a number of those engines for their delivery vans because they could idle very efficiently. UPS determined that the TCCS engines were 35% more efficient. But still nobody else was interested.
The Army was interested at first because the vehicles could run on just about any hydrocarbon including gasoline, diesel fuel, alcohol, vegetable oil, etc. The engine even ran on motor oil. But the Army suddenly lost interest.
