The generators that the electric company uses to produce energy at an oil-fueled plant are indeed much more efficient than a car engine, but even if one is willing to accept a device that is very larg...The generators that the electric company uses to produce energy at an oil-fueled plant are indeed much more efficient than a car engine, but even if one is willing to accept a device that is very large, expensive, and complex, it turns out to be impossible to make a perfectly efficient heat engine --- not just impossible with present-day technology, but impossible due to a set of fundamental physical principles known as the science of thermodynamics.
