So today I spent some time thinking about cars and efficiency,

File: 1410019914818.jpg (79KB, 680x510px) Image search: [Google]

79KB, 680x510px

So today I spent some time thinking about cars and efficiency, right? Cars burn gasoline (or diesel) to go forward - the more gas they burn the faster forward they go depending on the engine, and they turn the gasoline into carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and whatever else comes out of the tailpipe. The more gas the car has the farther it can go depending on the efficiency of the engine, with larger engines generally getting less mileage per gallon.

I was thinking about it, and what if there was a way to 'unburn' gasoline by running the engine in reverse? So the engine sucks up all the carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide through the exhaust manifold in the engine, then the pistons compress it back into gasoline? If you reverse the process, the car will just end up going backwards, sure, but if you got really good at reversing, you could in theory just drive places in reverse, suck up CO2 out of the air, and make gasoline and deposit it into the gas tank (for selling later, maybe). It makes environmentalists happy by reducing the car's carbon footprint and it makes a ton of money for the driver depending on how far they can drive backwards to unburn gasoline. Any thoughts? engine, and they turn the gasoline into carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and whatever else comes out of the tailpipe