The Altmann was an

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with Wheel, wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, pe ...

made by Kraftfahrzeug-Werke GmbH, Brandenburg/Havel from 1905 to 1907. It was one of only a handful of German

steam car A steam car is a car (automobile) propelled by a steam engine. A steam engine is an external combustion engine (ECE) in which the fuel is combusted outside of the engine, unlike an internal combustion engine (ICE) in which fuel is combusted ins ...

makes, and was quite advanced for the era. Its

valve timing In a piston engine, the valve timing is the precise timing of the opening and closing of the valves. In an internal combustion engine those are usually poppet valves and in a steam engine they are usually slide valves or piston valves. Internal ...

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...

allowed it to follow the

Gardner-Serpollet Gardner-Serpollet was a French manufacturer of steam-powered cars in the early 20th century. Léon Serpollet is credited with inventing and perfecting the flash boiler in the late 1800s.cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infin ...

s allowed it to produce . Its use of a condensation system and ensuing low consumption of water gave it an effective range of around on a single tank of water. The death of its designer, Adolf Altmann, prevented it from being built on a large scale. The firm later went on to build

electric car An electric car, battery electric car, or all-electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one or more electric motors, using only energy stored in batteries. Compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, electric cars are quie ...

References

* Hans-Otto Neubauer, "Altmann", in

G.N. Georgano George Nicolas "Nick" Georgano (29 February 1932 – 22 October 2017Nick Georgano
Alvis Archive Bl ...

, ed., The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars 1885-1968 (New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1974), pp. 38. Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of Germany Steam cars {{Brass-auto-stub